Lady Hounds open SEC play with win

FORT MADISON - It’s not just one defense that Fort Madison’s girls basketball team plays.
Coach Landon Bentley likes using a variety of defenses, and that played a big part in the Bloodhounds’ 47-30 win over Fairfield on Friday night.
Fort Madison (2-1 overall, 1-0 Southeast Conference) held Fairfield (1-3, 0-1) to just three points, all on free throws, in the final 10:09.|
“I feel like we’ve always been good on defense,” said senior Dayonna Davis.
Bentley agreed.
“We mix up a lot of things,” he said. “We run a lot of different defenses, and it's fun to be able to do that with an older group that understands things and is well acquainted with the system at this point.”
Fort Madison steadily pulled away from the Trojans, starting with a 6-0 run late in the first half that helped give the Bloodhounds a 25-18 halftime lead.

Fort Madison had some problems with Fairfield’s 2-2-1 full-court press early in the game, but figured out a way to solve it. The Bloodhounds’ first field goal didn’t come until Davis’ layup with 3:10 left in the first quarter.
“They take away the middle,” Bentley said. “We just had to adjust and recognize that, because we usually don't like going up the sideline. We just said, ‘Hey, it’s wide open, let’s use that and break it,’ and we were able to do that.”
“We just had to switch up a few things and once we did that, it was a lot better for us,” Davis said.
Fort Madison finally started to hit some outside shots in the second half. Hadley Wolfe hit back-to-back 3-pointers midway through the third quarter to give the Bloodhounds a 33-22 lead, and Fairfield would only get to within nine points the rest of the game.”
Davis finished with 15 points. Wolfe had eight points, as did Halle Menke. Charley Huebner had six.
“That's awesome,” Davis said of the scoring. “We really like how we're able to balance the scoreboard more and not just have one person doing everything, and it just feels good for everybody to play and hit shots.”
“I found myself a little flustered, but so were they,” Bentley said. “Shots weren't necessarily falling early tonight, and that's OK. We're getting good looks. Once we got some rhythm, then you saw some momentum shift. I think the shots will fall, they'll start to come but it is good to see that we just balance out our scoring with 15, eight, eight and six. And that's really great to see, knowing that we got multiple girls stepping up inside of their roles.”