Hot-Handed Lady Tigers Beat BobcatsWarsaw girls basketball coach Lenny Krebs said he felt like Maddie Ryman was due for a big game.
The 5-foot-6 senior delivered Thursday evening, leading the Lady Tigers to an 89-50 win over the visiting Oregon-Davis Bobcats.
Ryman scored 22 and 14 points, respectively, in Warsaw’s first two games, but scored more than eight points just once in the next six.
Against Oregon-Davis, Ryman made seven of her first eight shots, scored 16 points in the first half and finished the lopsided affair with 19 points, eight assists, five rebounds and four steals.
“If you go back through the stats, she’s struggled the last couple games,” Krebs said of Ryman. “That was partly due to the fact teams were able to key on her a little bit more because we didn’t have all the parts put together yet.
“And then other people started stepping up, and she kind of got lost in the shuffle for a little bit. I?think tonight Maddie got her confidence back. I said before the game I felt like Maddie was gonna have a good game, she was due for that, but at the same time Maddie and Kaylee (Patton) are learning to co-exist and play well together. That’s what you saw tonight.”
Patton, also a senior, scored 16 points to go along with six assists, five rebounds and a steal.
The Lady Tigers shot 60 percent as a team – compared to 33 percent for Oregon-Davis – and had seven players score at least six points as they put together their highest-scoring game since a 97-29 win over Elkhart Central in the 2001 sectional opener.
Senior Halle Shipp came off the bench to score 15 points in the second half, junior Brielle Harrison scored 10 points, freshman Abby Sanner added nine points and five boards, and sophomores Audrey Grimm and Kendall Wayne chipped in with seven and six points, respectively.
Eleven players saw action for the Lady Tigers, 10 of them scored.
“Last year, my main concern was that we weren’t very deep,” said Krebs, whose team has won three of its last four games and is above .500 for the first time this season now with a 5-4 record.
“We went about seven deep, that’s about as deep as we went, and we struggled after that. I want to be able to develop some depth where we’re 8, 9, 10 deep and we’re able to run people in and out.
“Part of the middle two quarters tonight the tempo continued to get pushed to a very high pace and we were able to go deeper into our bench. I thought fatigue became an issue a little more for them than it did for us. We’ve talked all year that we want fatigue to become an issue, because we want to develop our bench to the depth that we can make it an issue for you, because it’s not going to become one for us.”
Warsaw led 15-13 after one quarter of play, 46-26 at halftime and 66-34 at the end of the third quarter.
The Lady Tigers held a 17-16 advantage early in the second stanza, but used an 18-3 run to take control.
Warsaw’s 31 points in the second quarter was the third-most points scored in an eight-minute quarter in program history.
The 51 points the Lady Tigers scored in the middle two quarters is three more than what they’re averaging per game this season.
While the game was an offensive highlight reel for Warsaw, not so much for Oregon-Davis.
The Bobcats, who fell to 4-3 with their third loss in the last four games, were 15 of 46 from the field overall, 6 of 17 from the arc, and 14 of 28 at the free throw line.
Oregon-Davis was outrebounded 41-24.
Sophomore Mercedes Rhodes led the Bobcats with 22 points, while juniors Katelyn Sauer and Jayden Worthington added 12 and 11 points, respectively.
In the JV game, Warsaw beat LaVille 41-11, as Oregon-Davis didn’t have enough players for a JV squad.
Bailie Stephens led the Lady Tigers with 10 points, and Cora West chipped in with nine.
The Lady Tigers are in action again Saturday at Portage, their eighth road game in 10 games this season.
