William Tennent beats New Foundations to snap losing skid

WARMINSTER >> Riding a three-game losing streak, entering Monday night’s contest against New Foundations Charter, it was critical that William Tennent put together a solid performance.

The Panthers did just that, easily took care of the Bulldogs on both ends of the court to earning a 67-29 win in the William Tennent Holiday Classic.

Defensively, Tennent smothered New Foundation’s ball handlers. The Panthers forced turnover after turnover as the Bulldogs struggled to advance the ball across mid-court the majority of the night. And when New Foundations got over half court, Tennent still forced a bad shot or got a steal by jumping the passing lanes or having good hands if a Bulldog tried to dribble penetrate.

“That’s what we wanted to do,” said Tennent coach Paul Veltre of the turnovers forced. “We wanted to run on them as much as we could and we tried to go deep today and run a lot of players through that.”

For much of the game offensively for the Panthers, Kyla Gibson operated as the primary scorer as she finished with a game-high 24 points and Kelly Skipione backed her up with a 13-point performance.

“We’ve been struggling, the last week and half have been really rough for us,” Veltre said. “We we’re just not playing very well at all, turned the ball over a whole heck of a lot and Kyla needed a boost to start putting the ball in the basket which she did.

“I thought that Skipione, shot well, I haven’t looked at the percentage yet (but) it was good for her to be able to put the ball in the basket as well.”

The performances of Gibson of Skipione did not come as much of a surprise as they have been two of the top scoring options for the Panthers all season. Tennent used eight other players in the game besides Gibson and Skipione and they all scored, including an eight-point game, all fourth quarter points, from Bryn Evans.

“It helps because sometimes I can’t put the ball in the basket and its nice when I can rely on my teammates to do that,” Gibson said of all 10 Panthers scoring points.

Tennent will move on to play Palisades in the in the final of the  Holiday Classic and looks to build on its victory that hopefully gets it back track from a rocky stretch.

“Tomorrow is going to be a great challenge for us, Palisades is a very strong team,” Veltre said. “[Karlee Krchnavi] is fantastic, she can do everything, she just broke a school record I think of over 1,500 points, that team is going to pose a big challenge for us.”