Crescent-News.com - Napoleon knocks off Defiance in GBK opener

By JASON STEIN
cnsports@crescent-news.com

NAPOLEON - In a reversal of fortunes from last year, the Napoleon Lady 'Cats picked up the season opening win over rival Defiance, as the Bulldogs found themselves trailing early and were unable to recover in a 60-40 defeat.

Napoleon scored the first 13 points while Defiance missed its first 12 shots as the Wildcats' inside game helped give them the always important early advantage before Chelsea Ludeman exploded in the second half, leading all scorers and rebounders with 19 points and 14 rebounds.

"You talk to the kids and sometimes you want to overemphasize the good start because if you don't have a good start you don't want your kids to get down too much," began Napoleon head coach Rod Hersha. "But there's no way around it, when you have a nice start it just makes the whole thing so much easier. For our kids to come out and play as well as they did early, especially with the kind of inexperience we have ... the big start was very, very important."

Chelsea Smith set the tone early for the Wildcats, scoring the first points of the game on a put-back off of a rare Ludeman miss, and then scored eight first quarter points, with six coming in Napoleon's 13-0 run.

Ludeman added a couple of buckets, with Megan Zachrich adding a free throw and Amanda Lather adding the other two points to help push Defiance into a deep hole early.

"Pretty much, it was about the exact opposite of last year's opener," began Defiance's coach Amy Unverferth. "They came out, started off great shooting and we were cold. Missing the first 12 shots, it takes a hit on your confidence. You tell the kids to keep shooting, but coming out of the gates and shooting that poorly .. and Napoleon did a great job with rebounding. Anything they did miss, they got their rebound and put it right back up."

Jaide Hoellrich, whose aggressiveness paid off with an 18-point night as a starter, scored Defiance's first points of the season when she sunk two of her nine free throw makes on the night, at the 1:45 mark of the first quarter.

However, it wasn't until the Bulldog's thirteenth attempt from the floor that they got their first field goal, when Mikaela Tolbert finished off an inbounds pass with 11 seconds remaining in the opening eight minutes. Tolbert's basket came seconds after Smith grabbed another offensive rebound and made the put-back, to put Bulldogs behind 17-4.

Defiance hit just 1-of-14 shots while the home team sank 7-of-11, most coming from very close range as Napoleon tried to take advantage of a smaller Defiance team.

"Really pleased," Hersha said of his team's early inside game. "The term that we used before the game is that we wanted to play some smash-mouth offense. Ugly, call it what you want, but we wanted to get the ball inside, test them there and see if we couldn't get something positive going there. We've had mixed results with that in our scrimmages and getting off to the good start was big for us and a lot of it offensively had to do with us successfully getting the ball inside."

"One thing I'm a little disappointed in is giving up so many layups," said Unverferth. "I think they shot maybe two outside shots and they missed them and everything else came from in the paint. Everyone we play is going to have a height advantage on us but we just need to do a better job of limiting their layups."

The closest DHS would ever get the rest of the game came in the second quarter when they put together their best run, outscoring Napoleon 10-2 in the first 3:43 of the second quarter, using a press and forcing five of the Wildcat's 28 turnovers to help cut the deficit.

"We needed to score and we felt that with ball pressure we'd be able to get a couple quick turnovers which we did," said Unverferth. "We got some turnovers from the press but weren't able to convert very well. The girls played extremely hard, we just didn't play smart at times and our shots just weren't falling for us tonight."

Hoellrich, who added four rebounds and four steals,in the game led the comeback attempt, scoring seven points in the run, a two point bucket on a feed from Kiersten Lehman to begin it, followed by a trey and a pair of free throws to end it with the score now 20-14.

A pair of Lauren Funchion buckets, as well as baskets from Zachrich and Ludeman to end the first half, pushed Napoleon's lead back to double-digits, where it would stay the rest of the game.

Turnovers plagued Napoleon all night long, and despite 15 in the second half, the Wildcats were able to keep the lead around 15-points, thanks in part to 13-of-19 second-half shooting and a strong 42-23 win in the rebounding game, led by Ludeman, who finished the game by making six of her 10 second-half field goal attempts often on drives to the basket on breakaways.

"The biggest thing is the kids just played hard," concluded Unverferth whose team shot 13-for-53 from the field, just under 25-percent. "It was our shooting, our poor shooting, and at the end, when we're trying to score and we're trying to press so much to get the ball, of course you're going to give up a couple layups but it was throughout the whole game we gave up too many easy shots. Another thing that hurt was our foul trouble. Lehman was out almost the whole first half. Gabby and Riedel were out with foul trouble so ... when your starters are on the bench for a long period of time, it's always going to affect the game, but I think our bench people did a nice job."

Lehman scored seven points, all in the second half, and added five assists for the Bulldogs, with Gabby Gonzales leading the team with five steals.

Zachrich scored 11 points and Smith chipped in 10 more for Napoleon, with both hauling in six rebounds.

Napoleon's junior varsity squad also knocked off Defiance, beating the Bulldogs 33-19.

Defiance and Napoleon return to the hardwood on Tuesday as the Bulldogs play host to the Lady Patriots of Patrick Henry while the Wildcats travel to Bryan.

DEFIANCE (40) " Hoellrich 18; Lehman 7; Tolbert 6; Gonzales 4; Tumblin 3; Schrag 2; Bryant 0; Riedel 0; Daeger 0. Totals 13-53 12-22 40.
NAPOLEON (60) Ludeman 19; Zachrich 11; C. Smith 10; Lather 8; Funchion 6; M. Smith 4; Hesterman 2; Myles 0; Small 0; Behnfeldt 0. Totals 25-42 10-15 60.

3-pointers: Defiance 2-12 (Hoellrich, Lehman). Napoleon 0-2.

Rebounds: Defiance 23 (Lehman 5), Napoleon 42 (Ludeman 14, Zachrich 6, C. Smith 6).

Turnovers: Defiance 17, Napoleon 28.

Steals: Defiance 15 (Gonzales 5, Hoellrich 4), Napoleon 3.

Assists: Defiance 7, Napoleon 12 (Lather 5, Small 4).