Girls wrap up inaugural Shootout on Saturday

Event is chance to get early look at teams for 2010-11

sd_sports@yahoo.com

DEXTER -- Saturday afternoon marked the end to Dexter's inaugural Rib City Shootout with 32 team's high girls basketball teams competing in the bracket style tournament.

"Overall I thought the shootout went extremely well," Dexter coach and event organizer Chad Allen said. "We didn't have any problems at all. It just turned out to be a great tournament."

With so many teams the tournament was divided into four separate brackets consisting of eight teams.

Of the local teams competing the Lady Bearcats had the most success.

After beating St. Genevieve in the opening round of its bracket Dexter easily took down Dyer County, Tenn. 40-14 in the semifinals to advance the championship game.

That's where their luck would run out however, falling to Meadow Heights 41-29.

Facing off in the opening round of their respective bracket Scott County Central defeated New Madrid County Central, but falling in the next round 47-37 to Greenville.

While competition was fierce, the coaches agreed that this was just a great opportunity to build team chemistry and get younger players some valuable experience.

"We came in here very inexperienced with what (players) we had that came," NMCC coach David Crockett said. "I'm missing some key players, but that's good because I got to see what we could do when we were short-handed."

"I have a lot of girls that got some extra playing time that they needed and it's going to make us better."

Allen said the tournament gave his team an opportunity to gel well before their fall season.

"We have a lot of different girls that haven't played together before so this shootout was definitely good for them," he said. "We're just going to work on our overall team play to get our chemistry down. After we do that I think we're going to have a really good team this year."

Next month Dexter will host a boy's Rib City Shootout, taking place July 9-10.