ELIZABETHTOWN RACES OUT TO A WIN!
Rule of Thumb: If you ever plan to beat the Elizabethtown Girls Basketball team you must be able to 1. Protect the Basketball. 2. Break their Full Court Press. 3. Play a complete errorless game. If you don’t then BAD things will happen. 
Case in point, last Thursday’s match between North Hardin as the Lady Trojans were unable to take advantage of early Lady Panther mistakes and committed way too many of their own. North Hardin had trouble breaking their full court press to start the game and in their first two possessions immediately turned the ball over without getting a shot off. When Jada Gregory and Bri Morton were able to break the press, bad things still happened underneath the basket when Elizabethtown’s size and length doubled up the ball handler.
Elizabethtown turned those mistakes into quick transition points as they built a quick 26-11 first quarter lead over the shaken Lady Trojans in a 79-35 win. Sophomore guard Whitney Hay, who looks to be the NEXT All Stater to come from the Lady Panther Program was unstoppable at times using her assortment of moves, long arms and outside shooting to score 34-points to lead the game and Leikyn Walker added 16 more.
It doesn’t seem to matter who the Lady Panthers lose through graduation, there’s always someone else to step up whether it’s a solid role player who plays well in garbage time or an elite scorer like Hay, who had plenty of playing time the last two seasons because so many Elizabethtown games were out of control early and that meant plenty of minutes for bench players.
After losing both Jada Stinson and Taylor Thomas from last year’s team, there was fear that the Lady Panthers would be seriously challenged by John Hardin and the rest of the Region, but after six games (including last Friday’s win over Central Hardin) they are 6-0 and have only had one game which was within 15-points.
North Hardin, on the other hand has been through a serious transition period. After finishing with only 8-wins last season, The Lady Trojans went through another coaching change with former Meade County head coach Whitney Hooper taking over and started the season without two of their most serious scoring threats (Bri Morton and Jada Gregory) out of the lineup started slow and have showed some improvement even though their win total hasn’t showed it.
There were moments (All be it very few), where the shorter Lady Trojans did give Elizabethtown fits with their shorter quicker lineup as Deziree Bryant had 14 points and Braigh Fogle put up 13 and had 11-rebounds, but 30 turnovers were simply able to overcome that. 
Rebound wise the Lady Panthers had 32 to North Hardin’s 28 and Elizabethtown did have 26 more shots than the Lady Trojans, thanks to their 30 turnovers, still Hooper admitted later that she was pleased that despite seeming outmanned at some points, her team played well at points and there are NO seniors so there can be a growth period.
As for Elizabethtown, there is the Queen of the Commonwealth at Bullitt East and then to Orlando Florida before coming back home to face a full slate as they will prepare for the first of the two games against the Lady Bulldogs on January 19th.
