The Yates Center girls made swift work of the tough-nosed but ultimately overmatched team from Altoona-Midway Monday night. The win (53-20) propels the Wildcats into the second round of their home tournament, where they will face the Southern Coffey County Titans come Thursday.
It won’t be every game this season that the Wildcats hold the height advantage but it was true in spades in Monday’s matchup, and it spelled the difference between a tight game and a romp.
Yates Center’s two indispensable bigs — Allie Pringle and Taylor Jacobs — made life difficult around the basket for their less altitudinous counterparts on the Jets side.
Pringle’s is a rangy, all-purpose game. Left open from the elbow, she’s money. But crowd her there and she’s just two dribbles from the basket, with a quick enough first step to blow by most guards. She ended the game with seven points.
Her confrere on the low block, Taylor Jacobs, an aggressive rebounder and consummate stickback artist, bought most of her six points on credit earned from her hustle on the offensive glass.
But it was on the defensive end that the two tall Wildcats made their most substantial impact on the game’s outcome, throwing long, disruptive shadows across the sightlines of the Jets’ best shooters.
Still, it was the pugnacious, attack-the-basket play of Maddie Collins that earned the Cats their greatest share of points. She led the game with 11.
But the Yates Center girls are an unselfish bunch. Moved perhaps by early vibrations of the Christmas spirit, the Wildcats shared equitably in the wealth of scoring: In addition to the firm of Pringles, Jacobs & Collins, Melanie Hegwald added 8 points, Jaylee Catron had 7, Jordan Weseloh and Katelynn Jones each had 6, and Maddie Proper added a bucket in the game’s final minutes.
The Altoona-Midway girls are a rugged, well-coached, hard-as-nails group of seven players that, by the fourth quarter Monday night, had been whittled down to five. A hustle play at midcourt sent point guard Ashley Reynolds wincing to the bench with a severely turned ankle. That was early in the third quarter. Minutes later Anna Pierce fouled out. And then, of subs, there were none.
Natalie Davis led the Jets squad with nine points, eight of which came in a three-minute burst in the third quarter.
The Wildcats (2-0) will face a tougher foe on Thursday, when the team from Le Roy takes the floor intent on spoiling the hometown team’s momentum.
Yates Center girls handle Altoona-Midway with ease
