In their ideal world, Emporia High’s girls are forcing turnovers, pushing the ball up the floor and getting themselves easy baskets.
Overmatched Topeka High piled up the turnovers early and often on Friday night at EHS, and the Spartans did plenty of capitalizing. Emporia bounced back from last weekend’s defeat at Gardner-Edgerton and moved to 2-0 in Centennial League play, coaxing 31 Topeka High turnovers and coasting to a 57-28 win.
The Trojan turnovers, coupled with a mostly ineffective Topeka High full-court press, led to numerous successful fast breaks and pitch-aheads for the Spartans. Lindy Arndt had a super-efficient night, going 7-for-9 from the floor and finishing with a team-high 17 points.
“We played really tough defense tonight — that was mainly our focus this week in practice, was the small things on defense,” Arndt said. “Midline, ball pressure, denial and pass-away. And I think we did those things well tonight, and that created turnovers for us, and those turnovers enabled us to play at a faster pace. But if we didn’t get in a faster game, we were able to slow it down and run our offense.”
Emporia led 17-6 at the end of the first quarter, then continued expanding its lead. The Spartans led by 19 for the first time with 2:22 remaining in the first half after Lexi Hileman, in one motion, caught a pass on the run from Ashley Leihsing and muscled the ball into the hoop as she drew a foul. Hileman missed the and-one free throw, but Emporia had a 29-10 lead and led 33-14 by the break.
Topeka High made just 12-of-33 shots for the game, and the second half was much the same as the first. Early in the fourth quarter, Hilary Heinrichs hit Arndt on a well-executed backdoor play on the left side to make it 53-24, the first time the Spartans had led by as many as 29, the deficit by which they would go on to win.
“(Topeka) had had a little trouble with transition defense,” EHS coach Bill Nienstedt said. “... Plus, we want to play that way anyway. We want to attack, we want to run. Our guards did a good job early of pushing and pitching the ball ahead also. We looked up the floor and found lots of layups. Unfortunately, we missed way more layups than we’d like to, but we got a lot of ’em, that’s for sure.”
Emporia made 22 of its 48 shots from the floor, making up for an ugly 10-of-23 performance at the foul line. Armitage buried three of her five 3-point attempts and had 11 points. Heinrichs, who hadn’t scored in three straight games since scoring 12 in the season-opening win over Olathe North, got Emporia’s scoring started with a 15-foot jumper off a baseline drive and kickout from Arndt. Heinrichs finished with eight points.
“It was really good to get that first one. It kind of built some confidence back up,” she said. “Just kind of had a dry spell for awhile, and I wasn’t a really big scoring threat from last year, so I wasn’t really feeling like it was my job to be the big point-scorer.”
Raven Bell led Topeka High with nine points.
The Lady Spartans are now off until Jan. 6, when both Emporia teams travel to Topeka West.
“(Being 2-0) really helps, because pretty much in our league, the Centennial League’s so tough that you have to be undefeated to win it, pretty much,” Heinrichs said. “And it’s just a good jump on (working) towards that league championship that we’re looking for.”
Emporia girls 57, Topeka High 28
Topeka High 6 8 8 6 — 28
Emporia 17 16 16 8 — 57
Topeka High (0-3, 0-1) — Marisette 1-2 0-0 2, Patton 1-8 0-4 2, Vosburgh 0-0 0-0 0, Bell 3-7 3-4 9, Sprew 3-8 0-0 6, Redmond 1-2 0-0 2, Browning 2-5 0-1 5, Hazelton 1-1 0-0 2, Benning 0-0 0-0 0, Warren 0-0 0-0 0, Ault 0-0 0-0 0, Ashworth 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 12-33 3-9 28.
Emporia (4-1, 2-0) — VanGundy 0-6 2-2 2, Armitage 4-7 0-0 11, Arndt 7-9 3-4 17, Heinrichs 3-5 2-2 8, Hileman 3-8 0-5 6, Leihsing 2-5 0-0 4, Kolmer 0-0 1-2 1, Scheve 1-1 0-0 2, Miller 1-3 1-2 3, Waldner 1-3 1-4 3, Elbe 0-0 0-2 0, Burenheide 0-0 0-0 0, Markowitz 0-0 0-0 0, McRell 0-1 0-0 0. Totals 22-48 10-23 57.
3-point goals — Topeka High 1-5 (Browning 1-2, Patton 0-2, Marisette 0-1), Emporia 3-8 (Armitage 3-5, VanGundy 0-2, Miller 0-1). Total fouls — Topeka High 17, Emporia 11. Fouled out — None.