SYRACUSE – Lakeland’s Lauren McKibben hit a three-pointer midway through the first quarter to tie Tuesday's game with host Wawasee. After that, the Hardwood Teepee became a vast shooting desert for the visiting Lady Lakers, with no more field goals in the half, and only two in the third quarter. The combination of solid defense by the Lady Warriors and poor shooting led to a lopsided 66-25 win for Wawasee. Using different zone defenses, the Lady Warriors allowed only nine field goals on the night, holding Lakeland to 21 percent shooting. The visitors were doing what they could to limit Wawasee’s offense, double teaming leading scorer KiLee Knafel with each touch of the ball, and forcing multiple passes each possession. Each offense was a bit sloppy in the first quarter, with Lakeland turning the ball over six times and Wawasee seven. The difference was the home team settled down some, and only committed eight turnovers the rest of the way. Meanwhile, Lakeland turned it over nine times in the barren second quarter, when it scored but a single free throw with less than 10 seconds remaining, and wound up with 24 giveaways on the night. Yet the consensus in the Wawasee locker room was the need for better effort, according to head coach Kem Zolman. “If you talk to the girls, they’re not real happy with themselves,” he said. “They don’t feel like they played as well as they did (Friday) night. Lakeland’s pressure caused us to do things we didn’t really want to do at times, but that’s all building for the next game. Fairfield will put a lot of pressure on us. When you hear them saying things like that, it means it’s starting to mean something to them. “In the beginning they hit some shots that could have made us kind of anxious, and we could have panicked there. But they stuck with it, and throughout the game I didn’t think our defense was that bad. At times we batted the ball around like a volleyball, but that comes with being a young team.” Knafel led all scorers with 23 points, and Cassie Martinez knocked down four treys on her way to a 14-point night. Kiley Cooper and Kelsey Hunter scored 11 and nine points, respectively, and Cooper collected 10 rebounds. Zolman is pleased with his team’s mental approach, knowing opponents will turn up defensive pressure as the season progresses. “We’re pleased with the win, but we’ve got a long way to go,” Zolman said. “How we handle the defensive pressure will tell us what we can do on offense. Lakeland pressured us more than Westview did, and caused us a little bit of trouble. They’re going to have to work exceptionally hard. When you’re a young ball club, there’s a tendency to panic; you don’t look where you’re supposed to go, you don’t jab-step to get a defender off of you, and those things come with experience. We’ll try to emulate that in practice, and try to improve on that.” The Lady Warriors, now 2-0 on the season, hit the road for the first time this season Saturday night for a 7:30 p.m tip-off at Fairfield. McKibben led Lakeland with 11 points, while Michaela Moore added six points. Wawasee led 15-8 after one quarter of play, 34-9 at halftime and 51-15 at the end of the third.
