Senior Night victory for girls basketball

Michael Simmons, Staff Writer

The Manhattan High Varsity girls basketball team started off strong in the first quarter of the game against Highland Park, which they later won 63-39 on Friday at MHS The Senior Night game included a new starting line up with seniors Chelsey Henry, Aubrey Downie, Gigi McAtee, Kennedy Wilson, and sophomore Kia Wilson.

The Lady Indians started out with 10 quick continuous points by the Scots. The Indians slowed down late in the first quarter and going into the second half scoring 31 points and allowing the Scots to score 22 at half.

“I’m glad that we won. We didn’t play all that great,” Kia said. “I think we did not come into it as strong as we should have and I think we got lax on defense and offense and we just weren’t playing as fast and as aggressive as we should have been. It’s not that we were playing bad, it’s just we weren’t as aggressive and it showed in the first half.”

The Lady Indians have had many slow starts throughout the season, but they always manage to overcome this and on more than most occasions, end up beating the opposing team with a double-digit difference. As usual, MHS overcame the slow start with an overpowering third quarter.    

“We had to kick it in gear at that point, we let them score way too many points on us,” sophomore Garrin Williams said. “That first half was pretty slow, the seniors did a great job of getting us started but then it was like we were rushing a little but we came back into the game in the third quarter and we were a little more calmed down and not rushing as much.”

While the Scots were down the entire game, they were holding on up until the end of the third quarter when the Lady Indians were able to pull away scoring 24 points and allowing the Scots to only score eight, making the score 55-30 at the start of the fourth quarter. Something that helped the Lady Indians increase the gap between them and the Scots was the way they played on defense.

“The whole season we have been working on pressure because we know we have athleticism,” Williams said. “We have a whole bench that can do the same as starters and we work on the pressure to help us get turnovers which lead to turnovers and it’s just a cycle that keeps going over and over.”

The Lady Indians defense was the main factor in helping them increase the gap between them and the Scots, and ultimately leading to the win. The entire game was nothing less than a total team effort.

“Well we would like for everyone to contribute, and that’s what we have had for most of the season,” head coach Scott Mall said. “Sometimes we would have games where people really stepped up and like last game where Chrissy [Carr, junior] and Kia scored a lot of points for us and that’s great we want to see that, but I think we have also shown  the ability for a lot of different people to step up.”

This game was such a team effort that the five highest-scoring players had a difference of five points between each other. The highest-scoring player was Carr who scored 12 points, six of which came from three-pointers. Behind her by only one point was McAtee, who scored 11 points four of which came from free throws. The Lady Indians next game is on Tuesday against Junction City at Junction City.