By Blake Colston
Sports Editor
Jalie Rother‘s first 3-pointer swished through the net. Then another and another.
“I definitely have a lot of confidence when my threes start going in,” she said. “It gets everyone hyped up.”
Rother’s hot shooting was part of a fast start for the seventh-ranked Okarche Lady Warriors, who coasted past ninth-ranked Arapaho-Butler, 66-44, to clinch another regional championship.
Okarche took apart the Lady Indians (22-5) with relentless full court pressure that forced double-digit turnovers in the first quarter as the Lady Warriors built a 24-8 lead after only eight minutes and never looked back.
“They were flustered and didn’t really know what to do,” Rother said.
“That was our focus. We didn’t think they’d seen pressure like that,” head coach Haley Mitchel added. “We wanted to continue that and keep it on them. Even if we didn’t always get a steal out of it, we wanted them to have play four quarters, full court. We thought that would make a big difference.”
Emma Stover scored a career-high 32 points and Rother added 15 to pace a balanced offensive attack that kept Arapaho-Butler’s defense on its heels for most of the game. When the Lady Indians had Stover surrounded, she found a teammate for an open shot, and when the defense left open space for Stover, she capitalized.
“That’s something we’ve really worked on. They can’t guard both,” Mitchel said. “If we use all of our weapons, we’ll get the shot that we want out of it.”
Every Lady Warrior that dressed got onto the floor as Okarche improved to 22-5 and won for the 16th time in 17 games.
“That next group goes hard in practice and really does a great job of getting us ready to play,” Mitchel said. “You love when you’re able to get them in the game and reward them like that.”
Okarche will face third-ranked Vanoss on Friday in Shawnee. The Wolves beat the Lady Warriors in last year’s Area Tournament.
“Right when our Area came out, we said it’s one game at a time, but the girls knew Vanoss was in our Area,” Mitchel said. “That was kind of our target to get back to them.”
