The Van Buren Pointers and Lady Pointers will play on their home court at Clair Bates Arena on the same night for the first time this season.
Conference schedules begin across all of Class 7A on Friday night with Van Buren hosting Bentonville West in their 7A-West opener. Varsity girls are scheduled to tipoff at 6 p.m.
“Our home support is certainly one of the best 7A-West crowds,” Van Buren head coach Austin Trembley said. “When the crowd shows up and they’re really in the game, Clair Bates can get pretty loud and is a good home-court advantage. It’s going to be nice to be there at least once per week.”
The Pointers already have played Bentonville West, just a week ago in the Neosho Holiday Classic. Van Buren won, 53-51, with Mekhi Burnett scoring with 1.6 seconds left on an inbounds play to win it.
Burnett finished with 16 points. Presley Kindrix scored 19 points, hitting 7-of-10 field goals with five 3-pointers in eight tries. Jordan West added 12 points.
“I think we’re more prepared, but we have to take what we didn’t do good and what we need to work on these next practices to be fully prepared,” Trembley said. “We’re definitely more prepared than we were. We feel good about that.”
Neither team revealed any earth-shaking secrets in the game, knowing they would meet a week later for a conference game.
“They return most of their team and they understand who they are,” Trembley said. “I think they’re probably a little further along in that than we were. We return a lot of players, but we added a couple that changed the dynamic of the team. It was good for us to play that game. It was kind of awkward, they’re our conference opener. Both teams tried not to do a ton of stuff out of their playbook and kept it vanilla.”
Bentonville West will likely start four seniors that go 6-5 Boston Barron, 6-5 Ben Larsen, 6-4 Collier Blackburn and 6-4 Gabe Hornsby. Blackburn had four 3-pointers and had 14 points against Van Buren last week and yanked down eight rebounds. Hornsby had 13 points.
Lady Pointers
The Lady Pointers finished runner-up in the 7A-West last year, earned a first-round bye in the Class 7A state tournament and advanced to the semifinals before losing to North Little Rock.
They’ll have their work cut out for them to repeat that great season.
The 7A-West boasts two teams that reached the 10-win plateau during nonconference play, including Springdale and Bentonville, along with defending state champion Fayetteville.
“I think we’ve done everything we can possibly do to prepare ourselves for conference play,” Lady Pointer head coach Chris Bryant said. “When you’re sitting there at 2-3, you have to reassure yourself that the schedule you played for a young team was the right thing to do. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger as the saying goes, but seeing our fight and our toughness improve certainly makes us excited and ready to start conference on Friday.”
Senior guard Jamilyn Kinney capped the nonconference schedule with her third-straight Most Valuable Player award in the Neosho Holiday Classic in leading the Lady Pointers to a third-straight championship in the event.
“We’re very fortunate to have a player like her,” Bryant said. “Each of those MVP awards were probably earned in a little different manner. She had 24 points in the finals and had a big game, offensively. In the semifinals, she was more or a facilitator and distributor. That’s her M.O., whatever it takes for us to win is what she’s going to do.”
Kinney also passed Stacy Prestidge (1,209 points) and Kirbey Blake (1,287) on the team’s all-time scoring chart during nonconference play. Kinney has scored 196 points in 13 games going into conference play and now has scored 1,362 points in her career, which is the most since Van Buren’s elevation into the state’s largest classification 27 years ago, and trails only Dayna Schultz (1,778) in team 5-on-5 history.
Good start
Greenwood opened the final season of the blended 6A/5A-1 conference on Tuesday with a doubleheader sweep of Alma at H.B. Stewart Arena.
The Bulldogs won, 53-41, to trim Alma’s lead in the series to just 43-41 since the two schools were united in the same conference before the 1975-76 season.
“They needed that win,” Greenwood head coach Greg Nichols said. “Defensively, we’ve still got some work to do, but it’s getting a lot better. Offensively, they played smarter. We did have a few mental mistakes, but that’s going to happen sometimes.”
Greenwood was over 50 percent from the field, hitting 22 shots in 41 attempts from the field. Ronin Stewart was 7-of-12 shooting and had 17 points.
Alma was still within, 32-25, with 1:56 left in the third quarter before Greenwood ended the quarter with a 7-0 run.
“You can’t ever count out Alma,” Nichols said. “Their coaching staff and their players always do a great job. You have to keep working every minute of the game or they’re going to come back and beat you.”
Greenwood hosts Clarksville on Friday night.
Tough start
Alma opens 6A/5A-1 action with consecutive road trips, first at Greenwood on Tuesday and then to Russellville on Friday.
“I knew this was going to be tough,” Alma head coach Codey Mann said. “I like where we’re at. I’ve seen a lot of the teams play in our conference. We’re right there with a lot of them. It comes down to us making shots. It’s a tough week. The good thing is we get two road trips out of the way.”
Mann also returns to Russellville, where he coached the boys team previously before coming to Alma.
“Going back to Russellville is always emotional for me,” Mann said. “I spent a lot of time there. You want to beat them.”
Tuesday, the Airedalettes managed just 11 field goals in the game but was within 11-6 late in the first quarter.
“Their defense didn’t have too much of an impact on the game like I thought it would,” Mann said. “I thought we’d really more trouble handling their 1-3-1. Early, I thought we handled it well. We just didn’t make shots. If a few of those shots would have went down early then we’ve got a little more pep in our step.”
Greenwood controlled the boards, holding a 39-26 advantage with 21 offensive rebounds.
“They’re bigger than us,” Mann said. “We’re the type of team that against a team like that we have to make shots. We didn’t make them. We missed a lot of free throws in the first half, the front end of some one-and-ones that could have made the game closer. The key was their size.”
Greenwood doubled Alma up in field goals, 22 to 11.
“Defensively, we didn’t have an answer because when they started shooting the ball well,” Mann said. “We had to help on the post. When we played their shooters, then their posts hurt us down low. You have to pick your poison with that team. We’ll work on rebounding and work on getting a little tougher inside.”
Lady Bulldogs
Greenwood opened conference play with a 66-32 win over Alma on Friday.
The Lady Bulldogs pulled away from an 11-6 lead with 29 points over the final 14 minutes of the first half.
They had a balanced game with Kinley Fisher, Harley Terry and Stormi Baggs all scoring in double digits with 12 players scoring in all.
“I have no idea who got the most rebounds or scored the most points,” Greenwood head coach Clay Reeves said. “I don’t generally look at that stuff, but we have had a lot of different leading scorers. I think we have a well balanced team. That’s great.”
Baggs had six rebounds to go with her 11 points.
“She’s good in that low post,” Reeves said. “We stay on our post players about posting up hard. We stay on our guards about looking in there before we do anything else with it.”
Kaila Cartwright scored just a basket but grabbed a team-high eight boards. Susanna Stein had three points and five rebounds. Kyiah Julian had nine points and five rebounds.
Out of their 22 field goals, 11 were in the paint and 11 were from the perimeter.
“Our posts can score and our guards can score,” Reeves said. “If our posts can score, our guards are going to get wide-open shots. If our guards can score, our posts are going to get opportunities to score. I really feel good about the balance of our team.”