6A State Tournament Game takeaways: Shawnee vs. Edmond Santa Fe

The first game of the Girls’ 6A Oklahoma State Basketball Championship began at 2pm between the Shawnee Lady Wolves and Edmond Santana Fe Lady Wolves. It was a fast paced and guard dominated game. Edmond Santa Fe outlasted the Shawnee Lady Wolves 51-43. Read on to learn about 5 takeaways from the game and just how Edmond Santa Fe came out victorious. * What was Santa Fe’s biggest strength? Defense. Defense definitely was key in this win for the Lady Wolves. They really went after Shawnee defensively which many times resulted in easy offense. Edmond SF guard, Kryslyn Jones, applied defensive pressure throughout the game and came up with a number of steals and fast break opportunities for her team. The Lady Wolves played a solid, half court, pressure defense which seemed to somewhat rattle Shawnee offensively. Santa Fe, being the more athletic team, had that advantage over Shawnee and many of their guards. This allowed them to guard and pressure heavily the way they did. * How can Edmond Santa Fe be slowed down? The game was fast paced, mostly due to Santa Fe. Guards like Kryslyn Jones, Keira Neal, and Ahoneste Walker live for pressure defense and fast breaks. They are all speedy guards and scored a lot of points vs Shawnee from steals. The team looked comfortable playing speedy, but Shawnee on the other hand did not. Santa Fe really likes to pressure, come up with the ball, and go off to the races on a fast break. They consistently send someone back court for a fast break when a shot goes up. They also like to linger and stick around on the baseline after a made bucket and harass in bound plays. This all made Shawnee uneasy and caused them to speed up their normal style of play. To slow down Santa Fe, a team would need to work the ball against their defense. Santa Fe wants to apply pressure on ball and cause bad drives and shots. Swinging the ball and working it inside and outside will make Santa Fe play true to their defensive positions and not be so eager to fan out early for fast breaks. A team would also need to be able to handle pressure defense and really take care of the ball. * What was Shawnee missing? Shawnee really needed more inside presence. A lot of threes were taken and bad drives happened. Shawnee forward Aubree Megehee had 20 points and played well inside but needed her teammates to do the same. Shawnee shot a lot of unnecessary threes due to Santa Fe’s defense but could have worked the ball more and looked for shots inside. Star guard, Lauren Fields struggled with the defense and her point production was also missed scoring just four points in the game. * What was the X factor for Santa Fe? Santa Fe was relentless on the boards. They pursued rebounds hard, the whole game! Second and third chance shots really benefit the Santa Fe Lady Wolves because they were able to maximize on extra possessions and points. There was a play at the end of the 4th quarter where Santa Fe was able to get two offensive rebounds, which help them to use time off the clock, and they scored off of the rebounds. Eliminating such plays could have easily helped Shawnee win this game. Even the guards rebounded well for Santa Fe.