Lady Tigers Set Tone Early At ManchesterNORTH MANCHESTER – Playing on the road for the first time this season, Warsaw girls basketball coach Michelle Harter wanted her players to set the tone early Wednesday night. The Lady Tigers did exactly that, as they led 22-5 after one quarter of play and 38-9 at halftime en route to a 59-40 win over the Manchester Lady Squires. Warsaw led by 32 points early in the third quarter, 41-9, and Manchester outscored the Lady Tigers 31-21 in the second half to make the final score closer than the game really was. “It’s really important when you’re on the road that you come out from the very beginning and play with energy and put teams away,” said Harter, whose team improved to 2-0 on the season. “On their home court, if you allow them to stay with you that gives them momentum, and that gives them confidence that they can continue to play with you and stay in the game. That’s the point we wanted to make from the very beginning. We wanted to come out and put them away early so they didn’t feel like they can continue to play with us. “I thought the girls did a good job of coming out and playing with that energy and having that attack mode and killer instinct that at times last year we didn’t have.” The Lady Tigers were aggressive on both ends of the floor as they raced out to the big lead. Warsaw’s aggressive defense led to 17 first-half turnovers for Manchester and 24 overall. “Coming out, we knew they were gonna pressure us,” said Manchester coach Jacob Everett, whose team fell to 2-1. “We knew we were gonna see that press. We worked on trying to handle it, and it just didn’t work for us tonight. Coming off (Tuesday night’s) game with Lewis Cass, we just didn’t have our legs. We weren’t able to cut very hard, or make those crisp passes that we needed to make and we just dug ourselves a hole early. “But then we went into halftime and it wasn’t about Xs and Os. We’ve got things in place that the girls have executed before and we know that it works. It just wasn’t working for us tonight, and so it was more of a philosophy thing at halftime. It was more about how the girls wanted to be remembered coming out of this. Does Warsaw want to remember Manchester as being fighters in the second half, or a team that’s just going to come out and do more of what we did in the first half?” The Lady Squires scored nine points in the third quarter – the same number they scored in the first half – and exploded for 22 points in the fourth quarter. The majority of Manchester’s points in the second half, 24 of 31 to be exact, came from the three-point arc. Junior Kerigan Hatfield led the Lady Squires in scoring with 12 points, all from the arc in the second half, while senior Bailey Sewell and junior Sydney Day scored six and five points, respectively. For Warsaw, senior Dayton Groninger scored a game-high 23 points and pulled down a game-high eight rebounds to go with two steals. Groninger, who was aggressive in driving to the basket, made 7 of 8 free throw attempts and has scored 43 points in two games this season. “That’s one thing for Dayton to take her game to the next level she needed to do is look to attack and finish strong,” Harter said of her senior star. “She really worked on that this summer, and you’re seeing that start to pay off.” Senior Madi Graham chipped in with 12 points, three rebounds and a pair of steals, while sophomore Kacy Bragg finished with seven points, three rebounds and a pair of steals. The Lady Tigers are in action Friday when they host Huntington North, while Manchester travels to Bluffton Saturday. Wednesday’s meeting was the first between the teams since Nov. 24, 2006.
