FAIRBURY — For the fourth year in a row now, the Morris girls basketball team has opened its season at the Prairie Central Thanksgiving Tournament. Last year was a rough year for the Redskins in that they went 0-5 at the event.
Things got off to a much better start for the locals this year as they opened up with a 42-38 win Monday over Decatur MacArthur. However, on Tuesday the Redskins ran into a red-hot Prairie Central team and lost to the Hawks by a 66-28 score.
"This is a nice tournament. When we first got into it, it was more of a (Class) 2A Tournament and now four of the five teams here are 3A," Morris coach Luke Windy said. "We don't get a chance to see a lot of these teams. It's a nice little 3A Tournament for us."
Nice wouldn't be the first descriptor of Tuesday's 38-point loss to the Hawks, however. Led by 21 points from Gabby Weber, 14 from Laura Crane and 11 from Kiana Coomber, the Hawks rolled to the win.
"It was a matter of too many mistakes on our part," Windy said. "The first four minutes of the game we played well, but there were too many mistakes after that. They are also a better team and they overpowered us."
Morris did hang close in the first quarter, trailing just 17-9 at the end of one. However, from there PC led 39-15 at halftime and 58-22 at the end of three.
"I think we played a little timid. Once they got out to the lead, they kept scoring and that's when we got down," Morris sophomore Julie Jurasits said.
Jurasits had eight points to lead Morris while Katie Friend and Sydney Corrigan had five each and Kellen Bernickus four.
"I've never had this much depth before and I'm enjoying it," Prairie Central coach Tom Garriott said.
On Monday, Morris won a rough and tumble game with MacArthur, a game in which the Redskins went to the free throw line 33 times.
"It was a rough game," Jurasits said. "We should have killed that team. Still, I thought we played well."
Morris trailed the whole game, behind 18-14 at halftime, 30-24 at the end of three and 36-28 with about six minutes to go.
"We played hard. The defense was pretty good," Windy said. "We wanted to keep them from scoring less than 20 points in the paint and they had 16. We made them shoot from the outside. Overall it was a great effort."
Jurasits had 15 points against the Lady Generals while Corrigan had nine, Ashley Bojovic seven and Jade Fisher five.
