UNION CITY – The Mississinawa Lady Blackhawks defeated the visiting Preble Shawnee Lady Arrows 51-33 on Senior Night on the Lady Hawks’ home court.
“It definitely wasn’t our best night but there are a lot of things going on with senior night – emotions are up and down about that,” said Mississinawa Valley coach Michael Paige. “Our substitutions were a little bit different because of senior night as well. We persevered through it and we’ll try to keep getting better. It was an ugly game for us but we’ll take the win.”
Three MV seniors were honored before the start of the varsity game; No. 3 Ingrid Ojeda, No. 13 Brenna Price, and No. 43 MacKenzea Townsend.
Mississinawa Valley took the opening quarter by a double-digit 18-10 score led by six Price points.
The Lady Hawks outscored the visitors 13-8 in period No. 2 led by six Townsend points sending the teams to the break with Mississinawa leading 31-16.
Mississinawa was one point better than the Lady Arrows in the third taking the quarter 14-13 with the Lady Hawks leading scorer, Taylee Woodbury getting her first and only points of the night, a 3-pointer with 1:23 on the third quarter clock. Purdin paced MV with five third-quarter points with the home-standing Lady Hawks taking a 45-29 advantage to the final quarter of play.
A fourth-quarter defensive struggle had the Lady Hawks taking the final quarter by a 6-4 score giving the Lady Blackhawks an 18-point Senior Night win.
The 2023-2024 edition of the Lady Blackhawks’ high-powered high-scoring team has set an expectation each night out but this night MV struggled to rain down 3-pointers as has become the expected norm.
“We had an ugly one tonight but that’s the beautiful thing about our team,” Coach Paige stated. “We won by 18 and Taylee had an off night but Brenna had 16, Kenzea had 14, and we still had two girls in double figures and another two girls with eight points so we can score – everybody knows that.”
“Every girl on our varsity team, all seven of them have been in double figures at one point or another so we have a lot of ways to score,” added Paige. “That’s the good thing for us going into the tournament. If you take one girl away another girl is going to step up and score. We were able to do that tonight and get the win.”
Townsend was dominant in the paint pulling down Lady Hawks rebounds while blocking multiple shots on the night.
“The referees let them play,” said Coach Paige. “They called it fair both ways so it wasn’t an advantage to one team or the other. It was just a situation where they let us play so Kenzea was able to get some blocks – we played physically with them and I’ll take the outcome.”
Price led Mississinawa Valley and all scorers with a game-high 16 points, Townsend added 14 points and Ojeda chipped in eight points to round out MV’s senior scoring on the night.
BOXSCORE:
MISSISSINAWA VALLEY – B. Price 16, K. Townsend 14, I. Ojeda 8, S. Purdin 8, T. Woodbury 3, B. Seubert 2 – TOTALS 16 4-6 5 51
PREBLE SHAWNEE – B. Agee 10, A. Mondello- Garrett 10, A. Sargent-Eckert 4, A. Unger 3, C. Hatmaker 3, A. Smith 3 – TOTALS 10 1-2 4 33
3-POINTERS
Mississinawa Valley 5 (I. Ojeda 2, S. Purdin 2, T. Woodbury 1)
Preble Shawnee 4 (A. Unger 1, C. Hatmaker 1, B. Agee 1, A. Smith 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS
18-13-14-06 51 Mississinawa Valley
08-08-13-04 33 Preble Shawnee
