Park stays unbeaten by beating Creek at WesBanco
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WHEELING -- The Wheeling Park girls put on a show in the nightcap of the Sam Andy Basketball Classic Friday night, defeating Indian Creek 77-38 inside WesBanco Arena.
The Patriots (4-0) continued their hot start to the season right into this game, scoring the first 16 points of the contest. Park's full court press defense gave Indian Creek (3-1) fits in the first quarter and the Patriots led 23-9 after the first frame.
"You can't replicate that speed in practice," IC coach Steve Eft said. "We're a young, inexperienced team and we've had a good start to the year, but we haven't experienced pressure like that. You prepare for it the best you can, but you can't replicate that kind of speed in practice."
The Patriots kept up the pressure and held IC to just four points in the second quarter. Fueled by 11 points each from freshman Alexis Bordas and sophomore Natalie Daugherty, Park led 40-13 at halftime.
Despite the comfortable lead, Park coach Ryan Young was not overly impressed with his team's offense on the night.
"I'm not sure we're going to shoot as poorly as we did tonight from the field (again) and we were still able to almost score 80 points," Young said. "It's good to get a poor shooting performance when the game's not close."
The Patriots have topped 70 in all four of their games this season.
"I think it's just that we play hard," Young said. "When a team presses like we do, it's going to generate points if you just make the hustle plays and I think we've been able to do that."
The hustle plays continued to generate scoring chances for Park in the second half as the Patriots dropped 23 points in the third quarter. The aggressiveness came back to bite them a bit though as Indian Creek shot 15 free throws in the second half, making 13.
Park scored 15 more points in the fourth and held IC to nine to reach the final score of 78-33.
"It's a great environment for us to play in with a young group," Eft said. "We graduated five seniors so this group has never experienced this type of environment, and that's why we wanted to come down here and play in this game. Park's always a really good opponent, this is a great experience for the girls and we're only going to get better from here."
IC's leading scorer was freshman McKenna Scott, who made only one basket but finished with 12 points as she made 10 of 12 free throws. Kylie Anderson contributed eight and Sammantha Ratkovec had five, including the team's lone 3-pointer.
Eight Patriots made at least one shot on the night with Bordas (19) and Daugherty (18) leading the way in scoring. Bordas made nine total shots while Daugherty drained four treys.
Four of Park's top five scorers were underclassmen as freshman Lala Woods (11), junior Sophie Abraham (nine) and sophomore Merritt Delk (eight) were the other leading contributors.
"It's really a testament to all their hard work in the offseason because we've only had them for a month ourselves," Young said of his underclassmen's performance. "The good thing about them is that teams have to account for so many kids and they share the basketball. When we do that and kids aren't forcing shots, we're going to be hard to defend."
Indian Creek will visit Harrison Central on Monday and Wheeling Park will travel to Morgantown to take on University next Thursday.
Wheeling Park 78, Indian Creek 33
IC: Scott 1 10-12 12, Anderson 4 0-2 8, Starkey 2 0-3 5, Robertson 1 2-2 4, Ballato 1 0-2 2, Ratkovec 0 0-2 0, Crites 0 0-0 0, Smith 0 0-0 0, Ketron 0 0-0 0, Blackburn 0 0-0 0.
WP: Bordas 9 0-0 19, Daugherty 6 2-2 18, Woods 5 0-0 11, Abraham 3 2-3 9, Delk 4 0-1 8, Walker 3 0-0 6, Lekanudos 2 0-0 5, Stone 0 1-4 1, Derrow 0 0-0 0, Ticich 0 0-0 0, Huffman 0 0-0 0.
3-Pt. Goals: WP 8 (Daugherty 4, Bordas 1, Lekanudos 1, Abraham 1, Woods 1. IC 1 (Starkey).
IC 9 4 11 9 -- 33
WP 23 17 23 15 -- 78