BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — Philip Barbour’s perimeter shooting remains a work in progress at the midway point of the regular season.
As a result, the Colts are searching for other ways to create success, and defensive pressure is chief among them at this point.
That was on display Thursday night at Bridgeport, as the Colts relied on full court pressure to set the tone, while preventing the Indians from developing any offensive rhythm in a runaway 51-19 victory.
“We’ve had some games we expected to win that we didn’t this year. We don’t want to take anything for granted, because we don’t always shoot well, but tonight, our pressure led to some easy buckets,” Colts’ head coach Rick Mouser said. “We wanted to work on that and work on getting more deflections and recovering defensively. We played really well on defense.”
By the time the contest was 57 seconds in, PB (6-5) had built a 7-0 lead.
Olivia Bell followed with the only Bridgeport (5-9) field goal of the opening frame, while Taitem Jeffries accounted for six of the Colts’ last nine points in the period to stake the visitors to a 20-5 lead after 8 minutes.
“Getting off to a good start is always a positive and that helped us settle in,” Mouser said.
The Tribe made 1-of-7 field-goal attempts and had seven turnovers in the first quarter, and things hardly got better in the second.
Gracie Wolfe’s three-pointer opened the second-quarter scoring, before Izzy Knotts asserted herself on the interior and accounted for seven straight points, including a conventional three-point play for a 31-5 lead.
Not until a Mahaylee Messenger follow-up bucket 15 seconds before halftime did the Tribe manage to score in the frame, and the home team faced a 36-7 halftime deficit.
PB took the press off for a good portion of the second half, but sputtered offensively for much of the third quarter. Despite being held to seven points that period, the Colts upped their advantage by limiting BHS to one.
Knotts did not play in the fourth quarter but still led all players with 15 points and 10 rebounds.
Wolfe scored seven, while Jeffries, Ansley Bolyard and Finley Carpenter contributed six apiece.
It was another step in the right direction for Mouser’s team, which has lost several close contests but also has a victory against Wheeling Central to its credit.
“We don’t play an easy schedule and I hope it pays off well at the end, which is you want to be at your best,” Mouser said. “You don’t want to be at your best in January. If we shoot the ball well, we’re pretty good, but sometimes we don’t. The nights we’ve lost, we certainly haven’t played as well as we should have at times and that’s the way it goes sometimes. There’s no excuses, but the girls get tired sometimes because we don’t usually go very deep. But as far as getting out and running, we’re a lot better when we get easy shots. That’s probably the best our press has been all year.
The Tribe made four field goals and 11-of-18 free throws.