Stingy defense, ball-control offense keep Bryant girls’ shutout streak going
EDITOR’S NOTE: In this time of COVID-19, with no sports action, BryantDaily.com will be posting past stories of Bryant athletics either posted on BryantDaily.com (from 2009 to the present) or published in the Bryant Times (from 1998 to 2008).
There’s nothing like controlling the ball on your offensive end to help your defense. The opponent can’t win if it doesn’t score and it can’t score if it doesn’t have the ball.
That’s been a formula for success in recent games for the Bryant Lady Hornets and it proved out on Tuesday, April 14, when they shut out the Cabot Lady Panthers, 2-0.
It was the fourth straight shutout for Bryant including the three games in their run to the championship of the Northeast Arkansas Invitational in Jonesboro on Saturday. It’s their seventh of the season as they’ve posted a 10-6 overall record. They’re 4-5 in the 7A-Central Conference with three of their losses by one goal.
“It was another solid performance,” acknowledged Lady Hornets coach Doug Maxwell. “Defensively, we only gave up three shots on goal again.”
Just as they did over the weekend, they worked to get far more shots that their opponents. The Lady Hornets took 24 shots with Haley Montgomery putting one in the goal in the first half and Amber Moskow adding another in the second half.
“Haley’s was a breakaway situation,” Maxwell related. “She split the defenders down the right side and beat the keeper, slammed one hard off the keeper and it ricocheted in.
“Cabot is a very well-coached team,” he noted. “They played hard, played well but our passes were just a little bit crisper than theirs were tonight.”
Moskow’s goal came from about 22 yards out.
“A ball bounced off a defender and she just took it out of the air and slammed it into the back of the net,” described Maxwell.
“Solid team defense has really been the key for us lately,” explained the coach. “In the last week and a half really, we started settling the ball and playing more our speed of the game, trying to keep the ball down on the ground.
“A lot of these teams that are trying to get the ball up in the air — and we were guilty of it earlier in the season, trying to play a lot of balls up over the top,” Maxwell noted. “Our forte is really our ground control, being able to spread the field out and create some opportunities. We’ve been able to do that lately and have some success with it. It’s really taken some of the pressure off our defense for us to be able to maintain possession of the ball as long as we have.”
He added that their could’ve been a few more goals but for the Cabot keeper.
“She made four or five just outstanding saves on some very well-struck balls by us that I was excited to see,” Maxwell said. “Fortunately, we were able to sneak two in there and our defense was sufficient enough to hold them back and really not allow their offense to really get anything going.”
The Lady Hornets travel to North Little Rock on Thursday before entering the final week of the regular season. They’ll visit Little Rock Central on Monday, April 20, then host the Lady Tigers on Tuesday before completing the regular season at Cabot on Thursday.
