Fort Zumwalt South Girls Bow Out of Playoffs With Sectional Loss to Fort Zumwalt West

CHESTERFIELD — girls basketball coach Mike Schneider doesn’t necessarily believe his team overachieved this season by advancing to the Class 5 state sectionals. 

But he was concerned that the Lady Bulldogs may have peaked last week, when they won the District 8

Unfortunately for South, Schneider’s fears came to fruition Wednesday night, when it got bounced from the MSHSAA playoffs following a 48-20 sectional round loss to Fort Zumwalt West at Maryville University’s Simon Athletic Center.

“I’m trying to come up with something clever to say,” Schneider said. “Zumwalt West, they’re a great team. They’ve got a lot of D-1 athletes on their squad, and this was their game.”

And they did so right from the start. West took the lead less than five seconds in, when senior guard Kelsey Jones flipped in a layup off the opening tip almost before anyone else on the court had even moved.

South missed its first three shots, and had two turnovers on its first five possessions, while West dropped in three short baskets in a row to take quick control of the game. Following the third Lady Jaguar basket, Schneider called timeout so he could talk to his team.

“The timeout I called right there, was just to remind the girls of everything we’ve been working on up to this point,” Schneider said. “I was kinda hoping that timeout might shake us a little bit and get us back into the flow of things. But I don’t think it worked.”

Indeed it didn’t. West went on to score the next five points before South got its first basket of the game, on a layup by junior Jennifer Cartee. The Lady Bulldogs ended the first quarter trailing 15-4. 

In the second quarter, West really poured it on, scoring the first 12 points of the period to take what proved to be an insurmountable 27-4 lead.

“We did not have a very good (performance in the) District championship game,” Zumwalt West head coach Monica Tritz said. “And so the focus the last couple of days was that we come out and play as a team right away. I thought we did a real good job of doing that today.”

Jones was a key figure for West during that first half run. She scored 14 points in the opening half, including a long three-pointer from the left wing that gave the Lady Jaguars their biggest lead of the half at 31-7.

The 5-foot-8 Morgan State University recruit finished with a game-high 17 points, as West (24-4) advances to the state quarterfinals, where it will face defending state champion Incarnate Word Academy (23-4), this Saturday at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, for the right to advance to the state Final Four, which will be played at Mizzou Arena in Columbia.

Incarnate Word defeated Zumwalt West, 55-36, in last year’s state quarterfinals. This year though, Tritz believes her team is ready to overcome the Incarnate Word challenge.

“We have to be ready to come out an execute Saturday night,” Tritz said. “I told the girls, be ready to play your ‘A’ game.”

West’s ‘A’ game was clearly too much for South on Wednesday night, but that didn’t prevent Schneider from reflecting on what proved to be a fantastic 21-5 season for the Lady Bulldogs.

“The good thing that came from the last two weeks, is our success came from us playing good team basketball,” Schneider said. “We can build on that for your next year.”