Sanner, Harrison Lead Lady Tigers To WinTeams in all sports know to feed the ball to the player with the hot hand, and Warsaw’s Lady Tigers did just that in their 66-30 win over Elkhart Memorial in the final Northern Lakes Conference girls basketball matchup between the two schools.
Memorial will merge with Elkhart Central to form Elkhart High School this fall.
In the first half, the hot hand belonged to junior Abby Sanner. She broke to the basket on the opening tip and scored four seconds into the game, then on the next trip down the floor she was fouled and hit two free throws. At the 5:29 mark of the second quarter, she scored her 10th point and gave her team a 21-9 lead.
Sanner scored 14 of her 16 points in the first two quarters.
In the third quarter, senior Brielle Harrison scored 10 of her game-high 18 points as the Lady Tigers outscored the Crimson Chargers 23-8 in the period.
Overall, Warsaw was credited with 19 assists on 24 made baskets, with Sanner and Harrison getting seven hoops each.
Warsaw head coach Lenny Krebs was quick to point out that while two players accounted for more than half the Tiger points, the accomplishment requires contributions from the entire squad.
“Abby and Brielle were on the receiving end of other people who got them the basketball in the right position to take advantage of matchups,” Krebs said.
“We knew our mismatches were going to be on the inside; you can look at the program and see where you are going to have a mismatch. In the first half, we took advantage of the mismatch with Abby, and in the second half we took advantage with Bre.
“That’s a total tem effort to get the ball inside in that situation. Obviously, Abby and Breille both finished well, and that’s what we needed. But it takes an all-around team effort to make that happen.”
Kendall Wayne had a team-high five assists, while Kaylee Patton had four.
Memorial needed almost 13 minutes of game time to get points from someone other than sophomore De’Mour Watson. She had all nine of the Crimson Chargers’ points in the opening quarter, including a banked buzzer-beating three-pointer. But she was held in check the rest of the way, finishing with 12 points.
It also took Memorial until the fourth quarter to get to the point where they had fewer turnovers than minutes played. It was the fourth game this season the Crimson Chargers (4-13, 0-4 NLC) were held to less than a point a minute.
Still, as coaches are prone to do, Krebs felt like the defensive effort could have been a little bit better.
“I thought in the first half we lost a little bit of aggressiveness; we were sitting back waiting for them to pass the basketball,” he said. “We weren’t being aggressive looking to set traps and when we did set a trap , we didn’t have a good angle at times.
“But I was happy with our defensive pressure. we were able to accomplish what we wanted with that defense.”
Even with the big lead, Warsaw turned the ball over 23 times, far more than Krebs would like. He credited the Memorial ‘s 1-3-1 zone defense for having something to do with that.
“The 1-3-1 defense is tough to prepare for; you have to take time out of your practice schedule in order to prepare for it,” the coach said. “We did pretty well for stretches, but others, not so well.”
Warsaw also handily won the junior varsity contest 51-12 over Memorial. Marin hart had 12 points and Zoe Bergan 11 in the victory.
The Lady Tigers (12-6, 4-1 NLC) remain a game behind NorthWood for first place in the conference. They will travel to Goshen (15-3, 2-2 NLC) for a conference game at 7:45 p.m. Saturday.
