After competing with one of, if not the best team in the state for a quarter on Tuesday in an eventual 30-point loss to the Mills Comets, the Benton Panthers took their frustrations out Wednesday in a makeup game with the White Hall Bulldogs at Benton Arena. The Panthers more than competed against the Bulldogs starting the game on a 17-0 run in an eventual 57-21 shellacking of White Hall in 6A/5A blended conference action.
“Coming out like that after a game like (Tuesday), you’re probably not as bad a team as you think you are, and after (Wednesday), you’re probably not as good a team as you think you are,” Benton Coach Dexter Hendrix said. “But, that says a lot about our seniors and just our team overall. We’re steady, keep working, great work ethic, great attitude. They’re going to practice and play the same way every time. They executed and played really well, and I was happy to see the way we executed and played defensively.”
It was all about defense on Wednesday as the Panthers’ full-court press forced eight Bulldog turnovers in the first quarter alone as senior Shaheed Halk was picking off passes on a regular basis. The Panthers (12-4, 2-1) ended up with 15 steals on the game.
“We haven’t done that in a while,” Hendrix said. “We try to start the game like that every game to get our guys going, but we stuck with it the whole game. That’s a credit to Shaheed being really active and using his length. I thought Skyler (Angelo) did a good job and seeing Jai (Peters) back on the floor made a good difference for us.”
Peters didn’t play in the Mills loss, but came back with a vengeance on Wednesday with he and Halk getting plenty of fast-break points. Halk started the game with an offensive rebound and put back and laid it in after a steal for the early 4-0 lead. Peters had consecutive buckets before another steal resulted in a Halk to Angelo connection for the 10-0 lead with 4:47 left in the first.
The Panthers continued to pour it on with Halk getting consecutive layups with an assist coming from Peters and senior Westin Riddick capped the 17–0 run with a 3-pointer assisted by junior Evan Sims. Senior Fred Harris took a pass from Peters for a bucket to make it a 20-5 first-quarter advantage.