By Drew Terhall

DailyAdvocate.com

GREENVILLE — Two steps forward, one step back for the Lady Wave basketball team. After a 2-0 start, Greenville drops their first game of the season, 46-23, to last year’s MVL champion Sidney on Nov. 29 at home.

Head coach Rachel Kerns said the team learned quite a bit from this one. After being down big at halftime, the team outscored the Yellow Jackets, 19-18. Kerns said not only did the team not give up, they started to just flat out play better.

They faced a tough task going up against a talented group in Sidney.

“Sidney has three incredible guards and they would play for any team in our conference. When you are a young team, I said very early on we’re going to take two steps forward, take a step forward and two steps back. This is your perfect example of it,” Kerns said.

Sidney led 28-4 at halftime. The Lady Wave struggled going up against the on ball pressure defense from the Lady Yellow Jackets.

As the first half went on, they started to commit less turnovers but couldn’t capitalize on the rare scoring opportunities they got.

But in the second half, the defense for Greenville started to ignite the offense.

Kerns said the team started out in a box and one to combat against the shooters of Sidney, something they haven’t done yet this season. In the second half, they were in a zone that gave Sidney some problems.

The Lady Wave started to get some turnovers and convert those into points. Kerns said it’s all learning on defense as they will change how they play on that end with who they have available at the time.

Kerns highlighted the defensive effort from sophomore Jayda Lyons. She was tasked with going up against junior Jordan Scully who had 20 points in Sidney’s win over Russia.

Kerns said Lyons had a great game defensively and made life difficult for Scully when she was in.

“She scored four points when Jayda wasn’t in. She hit a shot right at the end of the quarter. She got zero clean shots off of Jayda. I think she hit seven threes in game one and I don’t know if she got seven clean looks tonight,” Kerns said. “Kudos to Jayda, that’s a hard task to do.”

Scully had 10 total points in the game and was second on the team in scoring.

The main thing Kerns said the team learned was they need more girls able to handle the ball. She said junior Avery Baumann does a great job running the point guard position, but they need more ball handlers.

She also said it’s a whole other element for the girls to learn on wanting to have the ball and making a play with it outside of just setting a screen or just shooting it.

“We need another guard, we need another girl who wants the ball and who can handle the ball. Avery does a great job, but it’s really easy to guard one person,” Kerns said. “That was a challenge for some of our other girls.”

On the positive side, Kerns said they will have time to work on that skill as most of the team will be back next season.

Baumann led the team in scoring with six points. She made two three-point shots in the second half. Freshman Megan Loudy had five points while juniors Megan Lind and Brooke Schmidt each had four points. Lyons and junior Maddie Hutchens each had two points.

Kerns said she was happy with how the team responded in the second half. It’s a step towards the right direction early on in the season. She did hope to be a bit more competitive in this one.

“I was hoping to compete a little bit more. But, if you tell me we had the second half that we have before the game starts, I’m going to say, ‘You know what, with such a young team that’s probably an okay thing.’ Frustrated because I know we can play better than what we did in the first half,” Kerns said.

The team will next play on Dec. 8 at Butler for a conference matchup. The game is slated for a 6:15 p.m. tipoff.

Contact Daily Advocate sports editor Drew Terhall at [email protected]