Emporia High was getting the ball inside in the first half against Topeka West — just not completely the way coach Bill Nienstedt wanted it to.
The Lady Spartans were on their way to winning their eighth straight game on Tuesday without a single 3-pointer, but it was their backcourt and swing players that were doing a lot of the inside scoring in the first half, thanks in part to forced turnovers and running the floor. At halftime, Nienstedt stressed getting the ball inside to the Spartan posts more.
If you’re a coach looking for something to do, that’s the kind of nitpicking you might do when your team is in the process of forcing 32 turnovers and winning 68-22. It worked, though — EHS got the ball to its taller girls in the second half, when Hilary Heinrichs scored seven of her 11 points and Courtney Waldner stepped off the bench to add 12 second-half points.
“I think we muscled in there a little better and just put our minds to it, kind of put our heads down and went to the basket,” Heinrichs said. “And we knew that they had some small people on us, so we just knew that we could take advantage of that really well. We just used our moves on ’em, used our size advantage, and good passing from the perimeter helped a lot.”
For the complete story see the Gazette print edition or the online print edition at http://www.emporiagazette.com/pdf. To subscribe to the print edition or the online print edition go to http://www.emporiagazette.com/subscribe.