Despite playing backward of how they usually do, Manhattan High girls beat Shawnee Heights 65-30 on Friday to walk away with the Centennial League title.

Manhattan High started the game off stronger than ever going on a 23-6 run by the end of the first quarter, which was the opposite of how they usually play: a slow start and strong finish.

“I thought the girls played really well,” head coach Scott Mall said. “They played all zone, and we don’t see a lot of zone, but we moved the ball well, we hit some outside shots, we did a good job of getting it inside. Early on we moved the ball really well. Gigi [McAtee, senior] and Chrissy [Carr, junior] had some good outside shots. Inside we were able to get it to Kia [Wilson, sophomore] and Kennedy [Wilson, senior].”

The strong half was lead by McAtee who scored 10 points during the first half, six of which came from 3-pointers. McAtee was the highest-scoring player with a total of 15 points: three 3-pointers and three field goals.

The strong first half was also thanks to the Lady Indians defense.   

“I think the key to [strong first quarter] was the press, we got a lot of quick points off that,” McAtee said. “We worked a lot on our gap defense, instead of sitting back, getting more into the passing lanes and so I think we got a little more pressure on them, getting the layups obviously helped and we came out just hitting shots and playing hard.”

The Lady Indians defense held the Thunderbirds to only 11 points in the first half, but following the same path as the offense allowing the Thunderbirds to score 19 points in the second half.

The Lady Indians are currently 18-1 overall and undefeated in the league at 12-0. As the Lady Indians progress into the postseason, they are still trying to make certain improvements to ready themselves for the better teams that they will face.

“I think we’re always trying to make improvements. We’re going to have to keep working on defending different types of teams,” Mall said. “You never know, when you get into the postseason the teams you played during the regular season might be very different from what you see during the postseason, so we need to work on defending different types of offensive teams.”

The Lady Indians head into the postseason with their next game on Thursday against Wichita Southeast at MHS.  

“Now it’s one game at a time,” Mall said. “We’re going to go into the next game knowing that we need to be playing well and hopefully can win that and move on and knowing that we’re going to play a good team if we can make it to the sub-state championship game, and these girls have set a goal and we’re going to have to play well if we are going to make it to that goal.”