By Drew Terhall

DailyAdvocate.com

UNION CITY — Not matter if it was an offensive duel or a defensive battle, the Mississinawa Valley girls basketball team won 59-46 over Coldwater at home on Dec. 12.

Head coach Michael Paige said they played at a slower pace than they wanted to as Coldwater controlled the pace of the game for most of it. But, their post players stepped up and helped lead the team to victory.

“I think they (Coldwater) controlled the pace. That was one of the things I said before the game, we wanted to control the pace,” Paige said. “We weren’t able to do that tonight. But luckily, our bigs were able to get some rebounds and I think we played better down low with that. Our post players kind of carried us today.”

The Lady Blackhawks led 32-28 at halftime. They had a few turnovers and at times couldn’t get their shots to fall in.

Senior MacKenzea Townsend had 11 points in the second quarter down in the post. The offense did enough to get out to a lead in the second quarter.

Coldwater was hanging around the game with their three point shooting. The Lady Cavaliers made four three-point shots in the first half. The threat of shooting also opened up the paint where Coldwater took advantage of the close outs from the Lady Blackhawks.

Then the game shifted. In the third quarter, nine total points were scored. Mississinawa Valley won the quarter, 5-4.

The missed shots started to catch up to the Lady Blackhawks. They couldn’t get into a rhythm and capitalize on the turnovers they created.

A positive from the second half in total was the rebounding. Paige said the coaching staff challenged Townsend to rebound better after struggling against bigger teams like Russia, Tri-Village and Fort Recovery.

Paige said Townsend rose to the occasion in this game and rebounded well. He also mentioned how senior Brenna Price and sophomore Brooklynn Seubert also need to help out rebounding for this team to compete against bigger teams.

“We missed a ton of layups in that third quarter. We did a good job rebounding, but we just couldn’t finish. I guess when you look at the positive of the rebounding, but the negative of missing all those shots. Our defense did play well today,” Paige said.

Another reason for the Lady Blackhawks struggle was they were hurting at the point guard position. Paige said junior Taylee Woodbury wasn’t feeling her best before this game and it showed as she couldn’t push the pace as she normally does. Back up point guard sophomore Paige Emrick left the game in the third quarter due to injury.

Paige said Woodbury did a good job playing more minutes than they planned for her and got the job done.

In the fourth quarter, Mississinawa Valley started to separate themselves from Coldwater.

Junior Syenna Purdin made two three-point shots to started extending their lead. With the offense still struggling, the Lady Blackhawks started to attack the rim and get to the foul line.

Paige said not getting to the free throw line often and not converting on most of them hurt them in their one-point loss to Tri-Village. The team had 16 free throw attempts and went 12 for 16 in the fourth quarter.

With the made free throws and the stellar defense, Mississinawa Valley held off any comeback attempt from Coldwater to get the win.

Paige said playing against bigger, physical teams like they have already multiple times this season and later in the season will help the team in the future. He wanted his team to go up against those type of teams to get them ready for tournament play.

“That was one of our goals this year when we beefed up our schedule. We wanted to play a lot of the bigger teams because we’re going to see them in the tournament. Getting our team more physical, getting them used to playing against bigger teams, more physical teams, it’s going to help us get ready for the end of the year going into that tournament run,” Paige said.

Townsend led the team with 16 points. Seubert had 10 points, eight coming in the fourth quarter. Price had nine points.

Mississinawa Valley is now 2-3 on the season. They will play a road game at Franklin Monroe on Dec. 14 starting at 6 p.m.

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