No offense to the Emporia High cheerleaders, but the EHS girls basketball team barely even knew they existed during Tuesday night’s game against Olathe North.
Focused solely on earning their first victory of the season, the Lady Spartans used punishing defense and opportunistic offense to dispose of the Lady Eagles, 74-27, at White Auditorium in the first round of the Paul Terry Classic to move their record to 1-2 on the season.
Sophomore Lexi Hileman said the Lady Spartans were so intent on finally getting a win that everything else inside White Auditorium seemed to fade away — even the cheerleaders’ victory chants.
“All of us were in the zone,” Hileman said. “When me and Muck (senior Jessica Muckenthaler) were sitting on the bench, we each noticed that we hadn’t hardly heard the cheerleaders because we were so in the zone at that time. We had good focus. I think everybody had good focus tonight.”
Against the smaller Lady Eagles (0-5), the Lady Spartans relied on high-pressure defense — something coach Bill Nienstedt said was a focus for the past few weeks — and forced 28 Olathe North turnovers, which led to easy transition baskets time after time for EHS.
“Good defense leads to easier offense,” Nienstedt said. “Eventually, we got a lot of layups where we weren’t really challenged.”
Olathe North took an early 6-5 lead 6 minutes into the first quarter, but that’s when the Lady Eagles’ shots stopped falling and the Emporia High shots started dropping. Nichole Naab hit a free throw to tie the game at 6-6 and spark a 19-0 Emporia run over the next five minutes that helped the Lady Spartans first take the lead and then extend it to 24-6 early in the second quarter.
Olathe North went 0-of-5 from the field during the stretch and committed six turnovers, while Emporia’s Rachael Bachman scored 5 points and Hileman and Lindy Anrdt chipped in 4 points each to spark the game-changing run.
A 3-pointer by Alli Armitage capped the spurt with 5 minutes to go in the half.
“That was the stretch where we were able to really pull away and establish control of the game,” Nienstedt said.
By halftime, the Lady Spartans owned a 27-9 lead, and the rout was on from there.
Emporia outscored Olathe North 20-8 in the third quarter, even though the Lady Spartans only made one field goal in the quarter’s first 5 minutes.
Muckenthaler said coming out of the halftime break, the team’s focus was on keeping the defensive intensity up while continuing to run transition offense. The Lady Spartans scored 12 of their 20 points in the period on transition baskets, with six other points coming at the free-throw line.
“We just wanted to go out and play hard,” Muckenthaler said of her team’s mindset heading into the second half. “We ran on them because they weren’t getting back on defense, and coach had told us to run because it’s not our fault they’re not getting back.”
But as good as the Lady Spartans were in the third quarter, they were even better in the fourth thanks to a deeper bench that wore down Olathe North. EHS rolled up 27 points in the final quarter while Olathe East only scored 10.
“Our depth, I think, was a big factor. I think we wore them down,” Nienstedt said. “There’s not a big drop-off on our bench. We’ve got a lot of subs who can do a lot things really, really well.”
Emporia had five players score in double figures in the victory, lead by Sadie Webb and Naab’s 12 points apiece. Muckenthaler and Lindy Arndt each added 11, while Bachman scored 10. Jasmine Walker led Olathe North with 8 points.
Next up, Emporia looks to get back to .500 when they face Blue Valley at 7 tonight in the second round of the round-robin tournament. Blue Valley lost to Olathe South on Tuesday, 49-40.
“I thought overall we did much better than we did the first two games,” Hileman said. “The win feels good. It’s a new year and a good start. I’m glad we started off with a good win, and I hope to come out (today) and do the exact same thing.”