Suffering their second loss by over 70 points this winter, the Labette Cardinals lost by 74 points to the Neosho County Panthers, 103-29, on Wednesday evening in KJCCC play.
Wednesday’s tilt was a display of two programs on different ends of a spectrum — Neosho County, a program with nearly two dozen players on its roster that runs a high-octane, platoon system and Labette, a rebuilding squad that dressed seven players and skipped the first half of the season due to low roster numbers.
“The motto this week was ‘don’t play with food.’ Labette is rebuilding and we knew we were the better team,” Neosho County head coach J.J. Davis said. “So that’s the mindset we had with our kids. And we wanted to respect the game.”
Full stats for the game were unavailable at press time.
Labette never scored double-digit points in a quarter while the Panthers led, 73-11, at halftime. Neosho County showed mercy in the second half, rescinding its press defense and milking the shot clock on most of its possessions.
“I just want people to see that we’re more than 94 feet of chaos,” Davis said. “Our girls are willing to do what their coach asks and don’t care about who gets the credit. In the second half, they just ran set plays over and over. They could’ve taken a shot at any point. But they wanted to show they could do that.”
Labette head coach Kaylena Andersen said the scoreboard wasn’t her team’s focus.
“I want the kids to compete. The scoreboard is the scoreboard, but that’s not more important than competing,” Andersen said. “Neosho is fast and they speed up the game. We saw some surges from us in the second half. But they took our legs from us.”
Labette started its season in the second semester with nine players, four of whom were on loan from the volleyball roster. Two of the volleyball players quit, leaving the Cardinals with seven players to navigate the season.
“As competitors and athletes, it’s frustrating being 0-4,” Andersen said. “They come in every day wanting to get better and knowing the hurdles in front of us. They’re taking it one day at a time.”
Neosho County has the largest roster of any KJCCC school and has dealt with blowouts against shorthanded opponents multiple times this season.
“We create a way where we have a style that players have an opportunity to play,” Davis said. “Then once they’re here, we love them harder than we coach them. We know Chanute is not a metropolis. Our players come for the people that believe in them. We care about kids and their dreams and them moving on.”
The Panthers improved to 12-5 overall and 2-2 in KJCCC play with the win — Neosho County opened conference play with back-to-back losses against Johnson County and Highland.
“We want to be a great team,” Davis said. “We had a bit of a break where we went through the fire. Now we’re coming out on the other side. We beat a great Allen team. Now we’ve got to take care of business. We get better as the season goes on. We’ll keep figuring it out.”
Labette fell to 0-4. The Cardinals lost to Fort Scott, 113-36, last week in its largest defeat of the year.
“We don’t want to have this feeling again,” Andersen said. “We have to apply that in practice. Dwelling in the negative is only going to keep us there. It’s like quicksand. We’re good basketball players, too. And they have to remember that they didn’t have a first half of the season, and that puts us at a disadvantage.”
Up next
Neosho County hosts Fort Scott on Saturday while Labette travels to Johnson County.
