Lady Panthers crush Comets, improve to 4-2

By Dan Truttschel~Sports Correspondent

The Wilmot girls basketball team put together a strong defensive effort for just about all four quarters last week at Delavan-Darien.

But it was the last three when the Panthers really went to work.

Wilmot trailed 9-8 after the first quarter but allowed just 26 points the rest of the way in a convincing 69-34 Southern Lakes Conference victory.

The win improved the Panthers to 4-2 overall and 2-1 in the SLC. Wilmot had been scheduled to play at Burlington Friday night, but that game was postponed because of weather and rescheduled for Friday, Jan. 17.

Even in the face of an early deficit to the Comets, Wilmot coach Keiya Square was pleased with his team’s defensive effort.

“All game, we played real-ly well defensively,” he said. “We were able to turn them over a lot. Early on in the game, especially the first quarter, we weren’t able to turn them into points, but the last three, we were able to get steals and some easy baskets.”

That wasn’t so much the case in the first quarter, Square said, as the Comets made a couple key plays, in-cluding a pair of 3-pointers, to take the early lead.

“We weren’t able to turn their turnovers into points, so we kind of let them hang around,” he said. “They went probably five or six posses-sions before they even got a shot off.

“When you do that to a team, you expect to have a big lead, and we were only up by eight (before their rally). They made plays. They passed out of a double team, got a wide open three, a steal and those kind of things.”

Wilmot’s defense wasn’t the only part of its game that began to take off after the in-termission.

The Panthers outscored Delavan 26-7 in the third quarter to turn a 27-20 lead into a commanding 53-27 advantage and never looked back from there.

“We made a couple small adjustments offensively,” he said. “We knew what they were trying to do within their zone and how they were cov-ering people. We got a lot of open looks. Defensively, we started to turn those turnovers into easy baskets.”

Kari Clements led a bal-anced scoring attack with 14 points, five rebounds, four assists and six steals. Rachel Szyldowski was next with 12 points and five rebounds, fol-lowed by Marnie Destree with 11 points and Jenna Damon with nine points and four steals.

Having a balanced scoring attack and other threats to go with Clements will be a key to success the rest of the season, Square said.

“We’ve been talking with our kids about that all year,” he said. “We can’t just stand around and watch Kari work. I don’t think we’ve done that.

“We have 10 girls who can score and get eight to 10 points a game, but there’s just not enough shots in a game for that to happen. We have to make sure we get that balanced scoring.”

Wilmot is back in action this week with a non-conference contest Friday night against visiting New Berlin Eisenhower.

Eisenhower, 3-3 overall, has been to the last two WIAA Division 2 State Tournaments and three of the last four. Eisenhower won the title in 2010 and finished second each of the past two years.

Square knows his team is in for a test.

“We know they’ve been historically good,” he said. “Looking at their record, it’s very deceiving. They started 0-3, but all three came to top-five teams in Division 2. They were playing some good teams.

“They have some good post players back and players who have a lot of big-game experience. It’s going to be interesting to see how we stand up.”

Boys hit road

The Wilmot boys, who also had a game with Burlington postponed Friday night, will venture to Wisconsin Dells this weekend for a two-day tournament at the Just a Game Field House.

Wilmot (5-2 overall) opens play Thursday night against Fond du Lac (3-4) at 7:30 p.m. The Panthers will face either Kettle Moraine or Sauk Prairie Friday.

Fond du Lac improved to 2-4 in the Fox Valley Association Friday night with a 64-59 win at Oshkosh West.

 

 


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