Panthers roll to 61-31 rout of Perry

ROCKFORD - Perry coach Kevin Wilkerson turned to Parkway coach Linda Hawk after a third straight made three-pointer in the third quarter and said: "Do you guys ever miss?"  

It sure didn't seem like it during that stretch.

Three straight triples by Sydney Crouch, Mikayle Heindel and Bailey Bates turned a semi-close game at half into a full-on rout as the Panthers improved to 2-1 on the season with a 61-31 non-conference victory at Panther Gymnasium in Rockford.

"I wasn't real happy with their performance in the first half," coach Hawk said. "I thought we got beat a lot at the top, which breaks down our defense. We weren't rebounding and our posts weren't working very hard. Our focus in the second half was to play better defense, work a little harder and crash the boards a little bit harder. They seemed to do that. Then we were able to pull out a little bit more of a lead on them."

Five different Parkway players scored in the first quarter, with Heindel, Bates and Crouch all scoring four each to help put their team in front 16-9 by the end. The Panthers had held a 10-point lead after a 12-2 run to start the game before Perry made a run to close the gap.

Parkway extended its lead back to 10 points by halftime at 26-16. Heindel led the first-half charge, scoring seven of her 10 total points.

Crouch hit the first three-pointer by either team with 7:15 to go in the third. Bates followed with one seconds later and Heindel drilled hers at the six-minute mark to shift the tide for good. Haley Hawk added four points to close the quarter to put the Panthers in front 41-22.

The Panthers outscored the Commodores 35-15 in the second half while holding them to 4-of-18 shooting. Parkway limited Perry to single digits in every quarter and 10-of-42 shooting (23.8 percent) for the game.

The Panthers went 24-of-52 shooting (46 percent) and 3-5 from downtown. Crouch took game and team-high honors with 14 points. Haley Hawk scored 12 while corralling eight rebounds, Heindel had 10 points and Bailey Bates added nine.

"The first couple of games, we did not have (balanced scoring)," coach Hawk said. "We knew we needed to have that. We can't just rely on our perimeter players or post, and we did have a pretty balanced attack tonight of getting our posts involved, and our perimeter players were hitting more shots, which is what we need."

Parkway has a long layover between games. The next matchup for the Panthers is at home with Crestview on Dec. 6.