Lady Blues hit the boards to beat Emporia
Knight held to six points
By Jeremy Shapiro
Saturday, February 4, 2012
There were second chances, third chances and, yes frustratingly enough, fourth chances. If Washburn Rural hadn’t made it, there might have been fifth chances, too.
The Lady Blues dominated the paint and had its way on the boards in a 53-36 win over Emporia Friday at EHS.
Washburn Rural had 27 rebounds compared to 17 for the Spartans. At halftime, the Lady Blues had more offensive rebounds than total Emporia’s rebounding total.
“Yet, we were only down nine,” said EHS coach Bill Nienstedt. “We cut those in half and we are down two or three. They were scoring on 75 percent of those offensive rebounds.”
Brianna Knight came into the game averaging 18 points a game, but she was held to a season low six points. She was 1 for 7 from the field and only attempted one shot in the second half.
“We thought like the best chance to get it to her was to get it to her early in transition,” Nienstedt said of Knight. “But you don’t get a lot of transition chances when you give up some many o boards.”
Despite a quiet night from Knight, EHS stayed within striking distance. In fact, they had the ball down 37-26 in the closing seconds of the third quarter with a chance to get the lead back down to single digits. However, EHS turned it over and Charly Michaelis hit a 3-pointer with one second left in the quarter. The Spartans never threatened in the fourth.
“Every time that we fought our way back to striking distance, we gave up second shots or turned the basketball over,” Nienstedt said. “I believe the three most important things in basketball are to defend, rebound and take care of the ball. When we did those things tonight, we weren’t bad. But when we don’t do those things, we dig ourselves in a hole.”
Washburn Rural improved to 10-4 and 6-2 in the Centennial League. Emporia lost its 8th in the last 10 to fall to 4-10, 3-5. The Lady Blues have won six straight in the series.
Emporia took its only lead of the game on a Kayna Hastings 3-pointer to go up 5-2. The Lady Blues scored the next 10 points. Erika Lane had eight of those points. In fact she scored the first 10 for Washburn Rural.
“Early on we did a terrible job playing the scouting report,”Nienstedt said. “The scouting report said she’s going to go left even though she’s a righty. We were supposed to have defenders in the gaps that can help. We were bad. Bad enough that we changed our strategy. We tried to get Shelby (Starr) and Whitey (Wilhite) to be right up on her.”
EHS relied early on 3-pointers with little success. The Spartans were 1 for 6 from beyond the arc in the first quarter and trailed 14-7.
The Washburn Rural lead grew to 18-9 after a Courtney Winkley basket. When the Lady Blues grabbed on offensive rebound, the next time down the court, Nienstedt used his third timeout. At that point, EHS had been outrebounded 13-3.
The rest of the half was a little better offensively, but the nine point margin remained at halftime. The lead grew to 15 in the third quarter, but EHS scored six straight on a Wilhite basket and two scores by Bethany Bowman. Nonetheless, EHS never could get the deficit below nine.
Wilhite led the Spartans with seen points, five of which came from the line. Hastings and Alex Johnson each had six. In her third varsity game, Bowman contributed four points and six rebounds.
The Spartans hit the road Tuesday for a game at Topeka High. Game time is 6 p.m.
Friday at Emporia High School
Washburn Rural 14 10 16 13 — 53
Emporia 7 8 11 10 — 36
WR: Lane 18, Cunningham 8, Weingartner 8, Winkley 8, Michaelis 7, Dillingham 4.
Emp: Wilhite 7, Knight 6, Hastings 6, Johnson 6, Bowman 4, Guion 2, Starr 2, Sanchez 2, Burris 1.