Just getting onto the court proved to be the biggest challenge for the Union basketball Lady ’Cats Thursday.
Playing in the consolation semifinals of their own tournament, the Lady ’Cats had to wait for Madison Prep to show up due to transportation issues, but then quickly took care of business on the way to a 72-12 victory.
“This was a good game to get a lot of kids in the game for experience,” Union Head Coach Grant Young said. “We shot really well in the first half, making six threes. All nine players who suited up for us all scored. Anna Houston had a career-high 11 points.”
The Lady ’Cats play Washington Saturday at 2:30 p.m. for the consolation championship.
Young knows Union faces a strong challenge in Saturday’s final-round contest.
“Coach (Adam) Fischer is doing a great job with the Washington girls,” Young said. “They are working extremely hard, and he’s utilizing their size with a long 1-2-2 zone. We have to come prepared to be patient offensively to find Rachael (Bassett) and Whitney (Vitt) inside and have the same confidence shooting against the zone as we did the previous game. We are undersized all year so must continue to box out well to limit extra possessions. They have a lot of momentum beating the No. 3 seed Eureka. We have to jump out early defensively and use our speed in transition to get quick scores against their size.”
Thursday Game
Union (10-4) opened the game with the first 19 points before the Lady Bears (0-10) scored their first basket.
Union led 31-4 after one quarter and 50-4 at the half.
Union slowed down its offense in the third quarter, and led 62-8 heading into the final eight minutes.
Young used all nine of his players and everyone got onto the scoreboard.
Alyssa Coons led the way with 16 points. She hit four three-point baskets.
Bassett was next with 15 points and she’s now just five points away from reaching 1,000 points for her career.
Houston took advantage of outpacing the Madison Prep defenders on the fast break to net 11 points.
Vitt ended the game with nine points.
Bethany Coons scored seven, Megan Altemueller recorded five, Briana Lakebrink hit four, Abbie Brack contributed three and Jill Johnston ended with two points.
Madison Prep’s top scorer was Taejah Khai Bean, who scored six points, half of the team total, for the contest.
Asia Gray-Reynolds, Dominique Pearson and Connie Reed scored two points apiece.
The officials didn’t have much work for this game, calling eight fouls between the two teams with six on Madison Prep. Union went 4-6 from the free-throw line while Madison Prep was 0-2 from the stripe.
