Erika Farst scored 16 points and Morgan Bailey added 11 as Clear Fork blasted Mansfield St. Peter’s (55-22) in their first girls’ basketball game of the season at Les Hauenstein Gymnasium Tuesday night.
The Lady Spartans (1-1) took a 4-2 lead with just over six minutes to play in the first quarter on a Tiza Jones layup, but would make one more field goal of the rest of the first half and found themselves behind (27-7) at the break.
St. Peter’s had 24 turnovers and Clear Fork coach Heidi Roush says they were able to get some easy looks at the basket as the result of those turnovers. “We definitely want to try and get after it defensively. Our best offense is probably our defense. That’s what gets us going. It took us a few possessions down the floor before we were able to get some of those easy shots. Once those started going in things stared to go a little better for us,” she said.
Eight players found the scorebook for the Lady Colts and Roush is happy with the balance she is seeing. “I think that teams can’t key in on one person anymore. They are going to have to have good team defense to slow us down. Erika Farst stepped up really big for us tonight, that was fantastic. I was pretty impressed with Morgan Bailey because she had a slow first half and came out in the second half and hit her first two shots, so the fact that we have a couple of different options this year is really going to help,” said Roush.
Farst made thee field goals and Bailey cashed in on two in the third quarter as Clear Fork extended their lead to (45-15) with eight minutes to play. Roush really likes the way Morgan has expanded her game. “We have told her she has the green light. She has a great outside shot, but because of her height and her athletic ability she can do good things on the inside too,” she said.
In their opening night win against Fremont St. Joe, St. Peter’s hurt the Lady Streaks with their pressure. Roush thought their ball handling was okay, but there are some things they can do better. “We had more turnovers than we would have liked. I think we ended up with 15 and we had eight in the first half, which wasn’t stellar, but anytime a team puts a zone on us we shouldn’t be turning it over as often,” she told Swankonsports.com, “We are going to have to come us with some better moves offensively to try a and get in there, but overall I was pretty pleased with the girls.”
Farst, Bailey, and MacKenzie Golden all cashed in on perimeter shots Tuesday night and Roush says they were able to extend the St. Peter’s defense. “That is what you have to do when you are going against a zone is you have to hit some outside shots to pull them out and open some things up and once we got some kids hitting from the outside that really worked for us,” she said.
Clear Fork won the rebounding war 40-33, but Roush says they didn’t do a good job when they were in a zone and that has to change. “Rebounding, rebounding, rebounding. We have to have another defense to go to and right now in our zone defense we are not rebounding out of it at all, so that is going to be something that we really focus on here for the next week,” she said.
The Lady Colts hosts Mt. Vernon in their next game next Tuesday. St. Peter’s plays Buckeye Central, also next Tuesday.
After years of toil and sweat behind radio station microphones, longtime broadcaster, Jeff Swank joined the new generation of sports followers on the web.
Swank launched his internet radio station with nothing more than some wire, a box with some knobs and switches, and an itch to do much more than just scratch the surface of everything sports.
Richland Source is proud to introduce Jeff as a writer focused on high school sports. He will contribute a weekly column and analysis of a featured game of the week from one of our area high schools.
In addition to his work at Richland Source, Jeff provides complete high school sports coverage for over 70 Ohio schools at his web site, http://www.swankonsports.net76.net/.
