Lady Warriors Close With Lakeland Loss
LIGONIER — Lakeland coach Dan Huizenga is happy to have Bailey Hartsough on his side. The athletic, 5-11 sophomore did look like the best player on the floor in Friday night’s West Noble Sectional opener.
Hartsough poured in 28 points, pulled down six rebounds and grabbed four steals to lead her team to a 53-33 win over Wawasee. The Lakers advanced to play Tippecanoe Valley in Saturday’s semifinal round at the Class 3A sectional.
“She’s special. I’m lucky that she’s on our team. I would much rather find a way to get her the ball than find a way to keep her from getting the ball, I’ll put it that way,” said Huizenga of Hartsough.
While Hartsough’s performance stood out, it was Lakeland’s ball-hawking team defense that really made the difference. The Lakers pestered Wawasee into 28 turnovers and never allowed the Warriors to get comfortable in their offense. They parlayed those miscues into 10 points off turnovers, meanwhile, and generally pushed the pace for numerous transition buckets on the way to the win.
“She’s a great player. She’s got size, athleticism, length. She can score from outside, and she can score from inside,” said Wawasee head coach Matt Carpenter of Hartsough. “She’s every bit of a leading scorer that you’d want as a coach to be a tough match-up. But honestly what got her going was scoring in transition in the second quarter. So our turnovers led to her offensive confidence. If we could go back, that’s what got her going. It doesn’t take much to spark a good player like that.”
Wawasee star Casey Schroeder’s intermittent foul trouble in the first half didn’t help matters much, either.
Schroeder was whistled for her second foul late in the first quarter and was charged with her third infraction with more than two minutes remaining in the first half. She still finished with a team-high 18 points to go with three steals, but with her playing time limited in that first half, Lakeland was able to use an 8-0 spurt midway through the second period to grab a six-point halftime lead. The Lakers opened up the second half with six more unanswered points and never trailed again.
“The difference in the game right there, Schroeder picks up number two and number three, and that got them momentum,” explained Carpenter. “They were able to get some stops and score in transition against us. They were able to get that six-point lead. Give credit to Lakeland, they’ve gone through the process over the last year or two with a lot of young kids, and they’ve grown up a lot. They’re talented. Dan does a nice job with his coaching staff of putting them in position to have success, and what they showed tonight is impressive and that’s the growth that they’ve made.”
Wawasee closed the year with a record of 4-18 with its third straight loss. The team will have to bid goodbye to both Schroeder and program mainstay Caitlin Wortinger, who rarely put up big stat lines but did all the little things for her team.
“Cate is an ultra-competitor. She has no quit in her. She just has energy and passion that she plays with, and when she brings that to our team you can see everybody gravitate to her and want to up their level of their energy and their passion. I’m extremely proud to have coached her, and that’s somebody I’d go to battle with every day,” Carpenter said.
“With Casey, as a leader, we’ve been working a lot. Through the ups and downs, through the adversity from really starting to burst onto the scene as a junior the second half of the year to getting all those awards to tearing her ACL in the spring. I’ve never seen someone want to win as a teammate and want her team to have more success than she does. Any honor that she gets, it is very little for what she deserves. The girl played through tremendous pain throughout the year. Her minutes were limited, and when we didn’t have as many scoring options this year, everybody was keying on her. So to try to come back as a senior and to be at 80, 90 percent physical strength and still be able to put up 11, 12 points a game playing through pain, that shows the toughness that that girl has.”
West Noble won Saturday’s nightcap by a 38-25 margin over Fairfield, meanwhile. Angela Gross scored 12, and Lauren Burns finished with eight to pace the home team’s offense. Fairfield got eight points from Brooke Sanchez in the loss.
Lakeland improves to 15-7 and will play Valley in Saturday’s early semifinal, scheduled for 6 p.m. West Noble will square off against NorthWood in the late semifinal.
“I’m proud of this team for battling. Our record wasn’t what we wanted by any means. I want to win, but more importantly we have character on our team right now,” Carpenter said. “We’re going to get the Xs and Os. These girls that gained a lot of experience this year, they’re going to come back, and they’re going to be better. We’ve got some kids right now that are in the program that don’t want to have that season end, and credit our seniors for laying the foundation of what it takes to be able to have success.”