NEW MADISON – The Mississinawa Valley girls basketball team jumped out to a 17-5 first-quarter lead and finished strong in the fourth quarter for a convincing 65-38 win over Tri-Village in a key WOAC match-up of top teams.
Both teams were tight to start the contest until Mississinawa senior Makenna Hoggatt dropped a trey at the 5:45 mark and she would follow that up with a second one at 4:31 to give the Hawks a 9-3 lead.
Mississinawa came out in a 3-2 zone and the Patriots who have traditionally feasted on perimeter shooting struggled against the zone with freshman Taytum Gray the only one to hit one from deep in the first quarter.
Meanwhile, the Blackhawks would get one more triple from Makenna, a fielder from Cora Hoggatt and Brooklynn Seubert, along with free throws from Paige Emrick for a 17-5 lead.
First year Mississinawa Valley head coach Kirk Comer was pleased but not really surprised by his team’s start.
“They came in here tonight with a lot of confidence, everybody did their job and MaKenna hitting those threes early, I thought was just huge for us,” Comer said.
Comer a veteran coach with 20 years at Jay County (Portland, Indiana) takes over the reins left by departing coach Michael Paige who is now coaching at Northmont.
While the offense was good … it’s the defense that would make the difference in the first half as they would hold the Patriots to just six points in the second quarter and 11 in the first half with 8 Patriot points coming from Gray.
Blackhawk’s senior guard Paige Emrick scored 6 of her 9 first half points in the second quarter by getting to the rim to tie Makenna who had 9 as well for a 29-11 lead at the break.
Tri-Village adjusted trying to solve the zone defense in the third quarter by attacking middle of the zone which got them some lay-ups and to the free throw line, rather than chucking up all perimeter shots.
They scored 17 in the third quarter cutting into the lead trailing 40-28 heading into the final stanza.
Coach Comer talked about the adjustments by Tri-Village against their defense.
“I thought our defense played extremely well, we got out on their shooters and pushed them out a little bit further than maybe they’re used to. They started to attack the middle of our zone, and it hurt us a couple times in the third quarter,” Comer stated.
But Mississinawa made some of their own adjustments defensively heading into the fourth quarter.
“We had our girls start doubling the middle forcing them to kick it back out,” Comer explained.
Typically, a good three-point shooting team, Tri-Village couldn’t dial it in, and the lack of scoring kept them from getting into their press forcing an up-tempo game that they like to play to get easy scores off turnovers.
Mississinawa was able to move the ball around shared it well forcing the Patriots to foul in the final frame with Paige Emrick and Brooklyn Seubert going to the line 14 times and would convert 10 of them.
The Hawks scored 25 points in the final frame for a convincing 65-38 victory.
Mississinawa coming off the school’s back-to-back district championship lost their all-time leading scorer Taylee Woodbury 16 ppg and Syenna Purdin 10 ppg to graduation.
One might expect the Blackhawks to struggle a bit to start the year having to replace 26 points and the intangibles they brought to the table … but the Blackhawks senior class this year might be one of the most athletic they’ve had in school history, and they would show that in their game with Tri-Village.
“I thought the key for us tonight was just everybody doing what they do. We dominated the boards. we know Tri-Village is a good team and they shoot the ball well, but if they miss and get the rebound then shoot again that’s a problem, so we knew we had to limit them to one shot,” Comer stated after the game.
“Tonight was just a really good win. The girls are really excited and should be they’ve been working really hard. Sometimes they don’t understand why we’re doing things, the way we’re doing it. But when you get something to pay off like this, it sure helps the next day to go back into practice,” Comer added.
“Hopefully now we can build on this. And I told them, we’re only four games in and what happens in December, doesn’t really matter, it’s what happens in February and March,” Comer clarified.
On that note, he knows the Tri-Village loss now isn’t the worst thing that can happen to them.
“Brad’s a great coach and a good friend they’ll bounce back, and they’ll be better because of it,” Comer concluded.
Tri-Village got 12 points from Taytum Gray and 10 each from Tai Mize and Adalynn Hines in the game. The Patriots fall to 3-1 overall and 1-1 in the WOAC. They will look to rebound at Bellefontaine on Monday.
Mississinawa was led by Paige Emrick with 19 points, Makenna Hoggatt had 14 and Brooklynn Seubert had a double-double 12 points and 15 rebounds. The Blackhawks improve to 3-1 overall and 2-0 in the WOAC and will host Botkins on Monday.
Another big game in the conference last night saw Arcanum come away with a 58-54 overtime win at Ansonia.
Box Score
Score by Quarters
MV 17 … 12 … 11 … 25 – 65
TV 05 … 06 … 17 … 10 – 38
Team Scoring
MV: T. Woodbury 1-2-1/2 – 8, M. Hoggatt 4-1-0/0 – 14, M. Stachler 0-1-0/0 – 2,
C. Seubert 0-2-0/0 – 4, C. Hoggatt 0-3-0/0 – 6, P. Emerick 0-5-9/12 – 19,
B. Seubert 0-3-6/11 – 12, Totals 5-17-16/25 – 65
TV: T. Gray 2-3-0/0 – 12, T. Mize 1-2-3-4 – 10, M. Bierly 0-0-1/2 – 1, R. Hunt 1-0-0/0 – 3,
K. Wilcox 0-1-0/0 – 2, A. Hines 0-4-2/4 – 10, Totals 4-10-6/10 – 38
