aBy RYAN HINES
rhines@dailystandard.com
A tenacious defensive effort allowed Celina to make quick work
of Kenton on Thursday at the Fieldhouse in Western Buckeye League
action.
Celina held Kenton scoreless for the whole first quarter and
the Bulldogs continued to pour it on the rest of the way resulting
in a 59-25 victory.
It’s the sixth straight win for Celina which improves
to 8-3 overall and 2-2 in the WBL while Kenton falls to 4-6
overall.
“We’re getting better as the season goes on and
we figured that would happen with some of the younger girls
that play major roles for us,” said Celina head coach
Jack Clouse. “We’re seven-deep right now and I think
that this team will do nothing but get better the rest of the
year.”
The outcome was never in doubt from the opening tip as Celina
built a 14-0 advantage after the first period.
Defense keyed the quick Celina start forcing five turnovers
while Kenton was zero-for-six in the first frame.
Kenton was finally able to dent the scoreboard with 7:30 to
go in the second quarter, but Celina didn’t let up building
a 31-13 lead at halftime.
The Celina defense continued to make things miserable for Kenton
in the second quarter as the Wildcats shot just 3-for-18 in
the first half of action.
“Our defense played well the whole game and shutout their
leading scorer Lauren McKinley. “We saw while scouting
them that their guard pick up the ball in bad places on the
floor so we went into the game knowing that we wanted to pressure
their guards and we were able to do that. I was very pleased
with our defensive effort and just impressed. We kept them from
running anything that they wanted to run and they couldn’t
find their shooters.”
The lead just grew in the second half as Celina walked away
with a convincing win.
“We’ve had some games this year where we build like
a 15-point lead and then we just let the other team get back
into the game,” said Clouse. “ We talked about that
all week and then at halftime tonight and the girls responded
and never let them (Kenton) get back into the game. Once we
built a big lead we were able to finish the game.”
The defense overshadowed a solid offensive effort by Celina
which shot 23-of-49 from the field (47 percent) and 8-of-18
from beyond-the-arc (44 percent).
Kelli Williams and Kara Osterfeld paced a balanced offensive
attack by Celina with 17 and 14 points. Williams added a game-high
nine rebounds while Osterfeld canned a game-high four treys.
Betsy Hone and Jenna Schleucher also contributed solid all-around
play while adding nine and eight points, respectively. Hone
also grabbed eight rebounds to help Celina win the rebounding
advantage, 39-28.
“We got some key contributions from several people,”
stated Clouse. “Andrea Bryan was sick all week long and
didn’t practice with us this week and we had girls like
Osterfeld, Schleucher and Hone pick up the scoring tonight.”
Celina was also able to win the junior varsity contest, 42-33.
Celina is back in action on Saturday at home against Greenville.
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