The Marmaton Valley girls youth caught up to them in their season-opening 45-34 loss at Uniontown Friday night.
The Wildcats played a strong first half and despite trailing by several scores for the majority, they went into halftime down just two points, 18-16.
That strong play continued into the third quarter with Marmaton Valley staying neck-and-neck with the host-Lady Eagles heading into the fourth quarter and that two-point deficit turned into a two-point lead at 27-25.
We also did a lot of good things tonight, head coach Sherri Bagshaw said. Tonight we had 26 turnovers where last year we wouldve had 46 turnovers so there are some positives to pull from tonights game. Early on, we were attacking the basket and looking to score and in the past, we didnt do that.
But the fourth quarter held nothing but doom for the Wildcats as Uniontown opened up a 14-3 run to start the quarter and never looked back on their way to their double-digit victory.
We kind of panicked, Bagshaw said. Were still a relatively young team. We only had one senior out there and some freshmen got a lot of time tonight and thats asking a lot of those younger girls to step up and play like that in a high-pressure situation. Then we started to get lazy on defense and we werent executing our offense.
Uniontown ended up outscoring the Wildcats 20-7 in the fourth quarter.
Senior Patricia Outlan and junior Bailey Griffith each led the way with eight points which for Bagshaw was not nearly what she expected out of two of her upperclassmen.
They need to be in double-digits, Bagshaw said. Definitely. But last year Bailey played post and this season Ive moved her to point guard so thats going to take some adjustment for me. Weve all got to get used to our roles and I think they will. Well get better each game.
Sophomore Kaylee Becker had seven, sophomore Mykayla Ard had five, junior Shailee Woods had three and freshmen Jada Harris and Alyson Ard had two and one respectively.
Harris stood out in other ways for Bagshaw including on the defensive end where Bagshaw felt she really made an impact.
She stepped up and had a really good game, Bagshaw said. I put her in positions that shes never played before. She really hustled. Yes, she made mistakes, but they were freshman mistakes and thats definitely something we can live with.
The Wildcats will now head home for the first time this season when they open their annual preseason tournament on Tuesday versus Northeast-Arma at seven.
I told the girls this game does not define our season, Bagshaw said. It just gives us some baseline data on where we can improve. But we only have one day of practice to figure some of that out before we play Northeast on Tuesday. So I encouraged our girls to really look at the film over the weekend and see what they need to work on.
