WARSAW — It had been six long days since the Warsaw girls basketball team’s last game, a 40-37 loss at the hands of Class 2-A No. 1 Whitko. The Lady Tigers returned to the court Thursday night to play another ranked opponent, their fourth in as many games, Class 2-A No. 6 Oregon-Davis. The Bobcats rolled Warsaw 62-42 last season, but the tables were turned in a big way this time around. Warsaw hit ten threes on its way to a convincing 52-31 victory over the visiting Bobcats.

Warsaw’s Kaylee Patton brings the ball up the floor during Thursday’s win against Oregon-Davis. (Photos by Nick Goralczyk)

“I thought we did some really nice things tonight,” remarked Warsaw head coach Michelle Harter. “We were looking to attack offensively, finally making a point to get the ball down in the paint, or to our post players and looking to kick back out. That’s one thing we were focusing on this week, we need to get the ball inside. That helps our post players as well as helps our outside shooters. We did have a lot more outside shot tonight than what we had been getting.”

The Tigers shot 33-percent from beyond the arc in Thursday’s win. The 10 made threes were more than the total number of shots made by the Bobcats as a team, nine. Dayton Groninger was leading the way from deep by making five shots from the perimeter. She would end up leading all scorers with 22 points. Mariah Rivera and Madi Graham each hit a pair of threes as well.

The Tigers led just 13-10 after the first quarter, and trailed early on, but that trend did not last for long. Warsaw found itself taking control in the second quarter and never really looking back. The Tigers were sound defensively and able to find success in transition, something that Harter had her girls focus on in practice.

“The other thing, offensively, that we focused on this week was transition. Get out and go, run the floor,” Harter explained. “I thought the girls did a really nice job of looking to push the ball up the floor. There were times that we went one on three, and we talked a little about that at halftime, but we play so much better when we’re looking to transition. That gets us going on the offensive end, it also helps make us more active on the defensive end. I thought we played much better defensively tonight.”

Oregon-Davis entered Thursday’s game averaging 63 points per game on offense. Warsaw’s defense held the Bobcats to just 23-percent shooting from the floor and under double digits in each quarter, including just s three-point effort in the fourth. Oregon-Davis had no players in double figures, but three with seven points each, Jami Hurford, Leena Tetzloff and Sydney Williams.

Groninger led Warsaw with her big night, but the scoring was well-balanced throughout for the Orange and Black. Graham and Kenzie Welk each scored seven, Rivera added six and four other Tigers contributed offensively. Groninger also led the team with six rebounds and six steals. Warsaw, as a team, had 13 steals and forced 19 total turnovers.

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On December 1, 2015 Warsaw was staring an 0-7 record in the face. That record fell to 0-9 before things were turned around and the ladies eventually finished with 11 wins and at second place in the Northern Lakes Conference.

At the same point this season Warsaw sits at 6-1 with wins over three ranked opponents. While there is still plenty of work to be done, the Tigers are feelings good about where they’re at and what they can get done down the road.

“We need to continue with this good, solid play that we’ve had here at the beginning of the season as we go into this next stretch,” Harter stated. “We have our conference teams coming up and its never easy playing in the NLC with those conference games.

“Last year we finished second in the NLC, we want to finish first. We have to make sure that were continuing to get better each night. That’s been our goal when we come out, ‘Are we going to be better tonight than we were last night?’ These girls have really bought into that. The biggest thing is just focusing on us getting better each night.”

Warsaw will travel to take on Portage at 7:30 Saturday night.

Warsaw’s JV won easily over Oregon-Davis 57-28. Nine different players scored for Warsaw in the game with Halle Shipp leading the way with 18.