The Pella Christian girls used lock down defense in the second half to pull away from Pekin 41-29 Saturday night in the opening round of the Class 2A Regional basketball tournament in Packwood as heard live on 92.1 KRLS.

The Panthers jumped out to a 16-12 lead after a surprisingly high scoring first quarter. Then the two teams traded the lead several times in the second quarter before Pella Christian’s Joslyn Terpstra went coast-to-coast for a layup with one second to go before intermission to give the Eagles a 25-23 lead they’d never relinquish.

Pekin didn’t score their first points of the second half until there were 21 seconds remaining in the third quarter, and they only scored six points total in the final 16 minutes. Interim P.C. coach Kevin Van Maanen says that the girls played inspired defense down the stretch.

“We haven’t really pressed hardly at all this year, and I thought out press did a great job of keeping them off balance and flustered. In the first half we had more trouble in our half court defense that was giving up way too many points and that’s kind of unusual because we’ve been pretty solid in our half court defense. We made the adjustment at halftime and our girls responded and we really shut them down in the second half.”

Terpstra led the Eagles with 19 points and Karlie Anderson added 10.

Pella Christian improves to 4-18 on the season and advances to a second round regional matchup on Tuesday night at Mediapolis.