BY MACK McCLURE

mmcclure@gbtribune.com

The Great Bend High School Lady Panthers weren’t about to allow the Western Athletic Conference loss to the Dodge City Red Demons stick a fork in their season.
Great Bend bounced back from last Friday’s setback to the Demons by avoiding an upset bid in upending Larned 57-51 Tuesday night at Panther Fieldhouse.
Cassidy Tutak, a senior forward, scored a season-high 15 points and senior guard Kalie LeShore added 12, leading Class 5A Great Bend past the game 3A Lady Indians, who upset Dodge recently.
Great Bend led 52-49 with 1:34 left in regulation after Taycee Bunn converted a pair of free throws. Shortly thereafter, Larned’s Kaileigh Dietrich made a steal and drove in for a layup, but LeShore blocked her shot and Great Bend got the ball back.
LeShore scored five of her points in the critical fourth quarter, making 3 of 4 at the free-throw line to shut the door on the Lady Indians.
“Kalie’s been playing well here after Christmas and with Lexie (Brack) in foul trouble, Kalie had to play a lot of minutes without fouling,” Great Bend head coach Jason Tatkenhorst said. “Cassidy played a great game. We want her on the court instead of fouling. She spent some time on the bench as well because of fouls, but she’s somebody that proved last season that she can make shots and be a scorer for us.
“One thing we might need to do is find her and maybe we need to wait to on our possession on shooting the ball until we get Cassidy a touch because we know what kind of shooter she is.”
Larned was led by Amanda Haberman, who scored a game-high 28 points on an array of post moves. She scored in the lane with 30 seconds left in regulation to close the gap to 54-51, and it turned out to be the Tribe’s last points.
“She is really an aggressive player and really played well,” Tatkenhorst said of Haberman, who scored the most points any player has scored against Great Bend this season. “At the same time, we’re going to run into more players like that and we’ve got to find ways to stop them.”
LeShore made two foul shots with 28 seconds left and Brandi Schneider sank 1 of 2 to close the scoring. The Lady Panthers made 8 of 12 free throws in the fourth quarter and 15 of 22 for the game
Freshman McKenna Mauler’s 3-pointer with 31 seconds remaining in the second quarter helped give the Lady Panthers a 33-27 lead at halftime.
An 11-2 run during the opening 3:14 of the second quarter staked Great Bend a 24-9 lead — its biggest lead of the game. Brack nailed 3-pointer and Bunn had a layup off a Larned turnover for the 15-point lead. Its defense also produced some points off turnovers out of Great Bend’s full-court trap pressure.
“We’d like to remember how we played there in the second quarter,” Tatkenhorst said, “because that was great stuff and we’re going to keep remembering how we played and hopefully, we can continued that.”
A pair of Tutak baskets, along with a bucket from Kaitlee Spray, gave Great Bend a 30-18 lead at the 2:52 mark in the second quarter
But Larned scored seven unanswered points, capped by a Haberman basket to close the gap to 30-25.
Mauler then hit her 3 before Haberman’s shot in the lane on the other end made it a six-point game at intermission.