Usually, when a team wins a big game over its rivals in a dramatic fashion, it will have some momentum going into the next game. Kelley Newton, the coach of the NCCC Lady Panthers, is baffled as to why that wasn't the case with his squad on Saturday night.

The Lady Panthers followed up their Wednesday night victory over Allen County with a 63-34 loss to the number-one ranked team in their conference, the Johnson County Cavaliers.

The visiting team was in the driver's seat for most of the game, jumping out to a substantial lead early.

Neosho County's Alexis Hafenstein pulled down some early key rebounds, and sisters Ashley and Katie Gorman both managed to score early. The Panthers did go on a 7-0 run towards the end of the first half, but Johnson County led by 12 points at halftime.

Neosho County didn't score at all for the first four minutes of the second half and only scored one point, off a Yahjara Vazquez free throw, in that half's first seven minutes. It was more than halfway through this second before the Panthers scored their first field goal of the half. Even though their offense picked up towards the end of the game, Neosho County's second half field goal shooting was at a paltry 26 percent.

Adding to the Panthers' bad luck in this half, freshman Courtney Swope went down with a knee injury.

Meanwhile, Johnson County's offensive attack didn't slow down at all, and the visitors came away with an almost 30-point victory.

Autumn Zenon was the only player on the Lady Panthers to score in double digits, with 11 points. Otherwise, Ashley Gorman had seven points and Katie Gorman and Shanice Palmer each scored five.

Newton praised Johnson County's defense, and cited their talents as one of the main reasons why his team had so much trouble scoring in this match-up.

“This was one of those games that it was going to take a lot of work to get ready for,” Newton said, “and we just weren't ready for some reason. It's my job to figure out why. It's my job to figure out what's going on, and why we're not focused, so the team will work on figuring that out.”

He summed up what he saw in the game by saying Neosho County turned the ball over too much, didn't get enough rebounds and didn't score. The 2-14 team has been facing these problems all year.

“If we don't take care of those three categories to start off with, we're in trouble,” Newton said.

The Panthers will next visit Kansas City, Kan., on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

“We've got to go to work,” Newton said. “If we don't work for it, we're not going to win it. We're going back to the drawing board. We're going to figure this out and then we're going to go back to practice and work.”