By RYAN WALKER
The Bluffton girls’ basketball team took care of business on their home floor Tuesday night against New Haven 63-28.
The Tigers (3-1) shot 44 percent from the floor, 50 percent from deep, and forced 24 Bulldog (1-5) turnovers.
What did head coach Eric Monsey like from his team tonight?
“That we played together. One thing that we really wanted to do better at is just getting ball reversals, making people defend us. I thought that we were more patient early on, which opened things up throughout that first half. The girls were stepping up and hitting shots — we haven’t consistently done that.”
Mounsey’s team quickly got on the scoreboard from an inbound pass to Maryn Schreiber after a turnover. New Haven would then cough up two more, and Haley Gibson took advantage with an and-one, hitting the free throw, and Lily King hit a triple.
Sissy Davis for New Haven would get their first bucket with a pair of threes’ to cut the lead to 12-8. Yet, the Tigers kept deflecting passes and scoring on fast breaks, enough to score four straight times and force a timeout.
Bluffton would take a 19-11 lead at the end of the first quarter, going 8-14 from the floor.
To start the second quarter, Tressa Renner got the scoring parade started with a put-back layup. A few seconds later, Gibson snatched the ball from a pass and sent it down court to Marly Drayer, who pumped faked for another easy bucket.
That would light a fire under Gibson, who put up a bucket at the 3:29 mark, two three ball’s about a minute later, and four more points after. She tallied the last 12 points to end the half in under three minutes and 30 seconds.
“I was really proud of Haley, mentally believing in herself,” Mounsey said. “A couple of games haven’t gone the way that us coaches, and even herself believe that she can play too, and she did that. She stepped up and was confident and hit the shots that we know she can take and make.”
“It was good to see her smiling on the court and knowing that ‘I’ve got this. I believe in myself,’” he continued.
The Tigers ran up and down the floor, tiring out the Bulldogs and capitalizing on those 24 turnovers. Mounsey said it all starts with the defense turning it into points.
“Defensively, we really bothered them a lot, and we just stayed in the gaps. We had our hands high, we got deflections, and we had a lot of runouts in the first half and took the wind out of their sails,” he said.
With a 25-point lead at the half, Bluffton was well on their way to a win. They were able to put in some of the players that don’t normally get as many minutes and get the experience.
Seniors Kennedy Nash and Evie Schantz grabbed a couple of rebounds, and junior Cayah King scored a bucket.
With Cayah King’s basket, the Tigers had eight different scorers in the game. Coach Mounsey said that when multiple players are hitting shots, it makes them much more difficult to defend and that they executed that tonight.
Bluffton will open up conference play at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 25, at South Adams.
The junior varsity game between New Haven and Bluffton was canceled.
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