SPENCERVILLE- It was senior night for the Spencerville Bearcats on Thursday night when they hosted the Ada Bulldogs. The Bearcats used some balance scoring from to start to finish to pick up the 62-44 victory.
“They did a nice job of responding tonight,” said Spencerville head coach Greg Ekis. “On Tuesday we did not play well and we did a nice job of running the floor and getting some easy looks early and it allowed us to gain some confidence shooting the ball.”
The Bearcats got to work right from the opening tip and they were able to put pressure on the Bulldogs early. It was a quick 7-0 scoring run to begin the game as a basket by Gabi Croft and a three pointer from Kirsten to help build the lead for the hosts. Croft was far from done in the quarter as she connected on a three pointer to extend the lead to 10-1 and a basket to stretch the lead to 12-6.
“We work hard together,” said senior Sydney Lemar on being able to finish the season at .500. “We have been practicing hard and we are starting to have that confidence towards the end of the season.”
The second quarter belonged to the 1-2 punch of Wurst and Croft as they kept the Bearcats afloat in the quarter. A three pointer by Croft extended the lead to 15-6 and she tallied another basket to lead 20-9. Courtney Sumner led the Bulldogs with six points in the quarter but Wurst had something to say about the quarter.
Back to back baskets by Wurst stretched the lead to 24-11 and Wurst added another basket later to lead 29-12. Wurst scored 12 of her 22 points in the first half.
“Anytime we can put three in the double figures and we had two that were close to the twenty point mark is really important for us,” said Ekis. “We had some pretty balanced scoring with the three and Clara (Goecke) scored some for us and Eilan and Sydney did too.”
Sumner continued to work for the visitors in the third quarter but the balance scoring from Wurst and Heidi Keller pushed the Bearcat lead further.
Both teams put in 13 points in the quarter as it was raining threes inside the Walk-in closet. A basket by Croft and a three pointer from Wurst extended the lead to 54-31 but the shots from downtown weren’t done yet. Another three pointer from Wurst and Keller put a bow on the Bearcats victory in their final home game of the season.
Spencerville finishes the season at 11-11 and will begin their postseason trail on Wednesday at Ayersville high school against Paulding at 6pm.
“We still need to continue to get better each and every day,” concluded Ekis. “Paulding is going to be prepared and they are very well coached and they are going to be prepared for what we want to do and we need to prepare for them and come out with a good game plan and execute it well on Wednesday and come out and do it.”
Ada 6 – 12 – 13 – 13 – 44
Spencerville 12 – 19 – 18 – 13 – 62
Ada (44)
Courtney Sumner (21) Lexi Poling (9) Katie Sizemore (6) Autumn Andreasen (4) Olivia Burkhart (2) Anna Conley (2)
Spencerville (62)
Kirsten Wurst (22) Gabi Croft (17) Heidi Keller (13) Clara Goecke (6) Eilan Muniz (2) Sydney Lemar (2)
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