With the pairings drawn for this year’s SEISC Shooutout, the Columbus girls now know they’ll get a second chance at Van Buren County tonight, a contest you can hear on KCII.

Columbus has played excellent basketball as of late, winning their last five games to climb to 10-9 on the season, and 9-7 in the conference. During that time, the Wildcats have earned wins over Wapello, New London, WACO, WMU, and Pekin, with the win over the Panthers vaulting Columbus to fourth place in the SEISC-North.

The Wildcats are well-balanced. While the team doesn’t have a single particular standout leading scorer, Columbus still has several players who can put the ball in the hoop on any given night. That includes Kennedy Woepking and Ellie Sanders, both of whom average 10.2 points per game this season, Isabel Rendon, or Iris Garza.

Columbus head coach Kasey Keltner says their first meeting with the Warriors, a 47-41 loss on January 19th, was a missed opportunity for the Wildcats. “I think both teams felt each other out for awhile in that first game, and I rewatched the film and it’s a 1-point game with under two minutes left. And we’ve got four opportunities to score and take the lead, and we don’t on any of those. Then we have to foul at the end, and Van Buren does a good job of knocking free throws down. Hopefully the second time around can be competitive, and we can show up offensively a little bit better than we showed up there.”

The Wildcats’ opponent, Van Buren County, is 13-7, and 9-5 within the SEISC-South. That’s good for third place on the south side of the conference. The Warriors have won two straight over non-conference Clark County and fifth place finisher Central Lee.

Van Buren County is led by freshman Adalyn Snowgren. Snowgren leads the Warriors with 13.1 points per game, and despite being 5’6″ and operating as the team’s point guard, also leads the team in rebounds per game at 7.7. Senior Sophia Jirak also averages 11.1 points a night.

Tonight’s contest starts with the pregame show at 5:30 p.m, with tip-off at 6. You can listen at FM106.1, the KCII1 app, or kciiradio.com.