DUNLAP – After struggling to score in recent games, Warsaw scored its season-high point total in a 71-37 rout of Northern Lakes Conference foe Concord Saturday night. Concord’s Chandlyn Redmond scored in the first quarter to cut the Lady Minutemen deficit to three, and celebrated just a little bit that her team was still in the game. The Lady Tigers went on to score the next 26 points, including a 21-0 second quarter, and the rout was on. Concord finished with more turnovers (16) than field goals (12) and Warsaw made more free throws (21) than Concord had field goals and free throws combined. While there was a clear talent gap between the two teams, Warsaw head coach Michelle Harter said it was nice to see her team breakout of its offensive funk with the sectional coming up soon. The Lady Tigers made a point of it to turn defense into offense, forcing 10 Concord turnovers in the decisive second period. “We wanted to get our offense going again, and get people back in the flow of things, and I thought we did a good job of looking to run the floor,” she said. “We had our heads up, we saw people early, we were making the extra pass, and in a game like this, that’s exactly what you want to do. “We started off a little slow, but we got ourselves going by picking up our defensive intensity. It was nice to get our offense going in the second quarter, because we’ve struggled the last couple of games. We finally started to come out of it a little bit in the Wawasee game, but at Northridge and (Elkhart) Memorial we struggled. So it was nice to see the girls come out and things start to click again.” In the second half Warsaw continued to expand its lead, even after Harter cleared her bench with six minutes to go. The Lady Tigers got point production from nine different players, six of which scored at least eight points. Seniors Dayton Groninger and Madi Graham led the way with 16 and 13 points, respectively. Page Desenberg had 11, Erin Bohnenkamper came off the bench and scored nine points, and Kenzie Welk and Kacy Bragg had eight points each. “In a game like this, you want to come out and work on the things you need to do better to get ready for sectional,” Harter said. “And it was nice to see it coming from a wide variety of girls, because when you talk about, hopefully, playing three games in the sectional, you’re going to need girls to step up. I thought everybody who came off the bench came in and did their job, which is what we need them to do.” Warsaw (18-3, 4-2 in the conference) wraps up its regular season Thursday in Nappanee against NorthWood.
