NEW WASHINGTON — On a night when the Buckeye Central girls’ basketball team took control of the Northern 10 Athletic Conference, coach Abram Kaple said his team only played well sporadically.
“I thought we played well in the first half,” Kaple said. “We played with good energy, good ball movement, was able to make some shots, we missed some shots, too.
“In the second half, they switched some things up and we got a little stagnant, a little bit loose with the basketball, we threw the ball into areas where we shouldn’t have thrown it,” Kaple added. “I guess that’s frustrating in the sense that something that we talked about. It would be different if we hadn’t talked about it prior to that.”
BC guard Claudia Pifher scored 24 points and grabbed 10 rebounds and guard Emily Siesel added 19 points and had an amazing 11 steals in the Buckettes’ 53-40 win over second-place Seneca East Tuesday night.
With the win, the Buckettes (14-1, 10-0) took a two-game lead in the conference with just four league games left to play. Seneca East fell to 8-2 in the conference, 13-3 overall.
“That was our focus coming into the night, and that’s not to say that in one of these last four games, we have to continue to be a little bit mentally tougher than where we are,” Kaple said. “And it goes back to the rebounding and that physicality, we don’t have that all the time. It will be stressed tomorrow and Thursday in practice so we can put forth a better effort Friday at Carey.”
Pifher scored 14 of her points in the first quarter, as the Buckettes grabbed a 16-7 lead after one before Siesel scored seven points in the second period as BC took a 31-18 lead at the break.
But, in the second half, the Tigers got more physical in their full-court pressure, cutting the lead to 40-32 after three, and then trimmed the lead to 46-40 on a Brooke Bordner free throw with 2:26 left in the game.
But as Seneca East was forced to foul to get the ball back, the Buckettes made seven of eight free throws in the final two minutes to seal the win.
Seneca East coach Don Vogt said that his team played better in the second half.
“I thought we played more of our game,” Vogt said. “We were more aggressive toward our basket offensively, instead of passively, like we did in the first half.
“Our kids didn’t quit, they kept fighting,” Vogt added. “What coulda turned into something worse, the kids scratched and clawed and made something better. I don’t think the final score indicated what they did, you have to put people at the line at the end of the game.”
Vogt felt that Buckeye Central made shots at the end of the game when it needed to.
“Hats off to Buckeye Central,” Vogt said. “They have a great team, and they play well together, they have some nice shooters, ball handlers. We gave it a good effort to try and get back in it in the second half, and we did it. The ball just didn’t bounce our way in a couple of possessions that turned that eight to six.”
The Tigers were able to get back into the game by trapping defensively and getting the ball inside to post Amelia Boes. Boes scored 10 of her team-high 16 points in the third period, but the Tigers managed just nine points in the final frame.
“We made it much more aggressive by trapping,” Vogt said. “We have no excuses, we’re just missing a sub tonight because of illness; it’s hard to do that kind of intense, full-court trapping, running for the whole game. So defensively, we were a little more passive until we felt we needed to make a run and that’s what we tried to do. We just came up a little short.”
Kaple felt that Seneca East’s physicality in the second half hurt his team.
“We have two really good guards, and we have to do a better job of taking care of the basketball, almost being slightly offended if somebody wants to press us and that’s not the attitude that we had,” Kaple said. “I thought that we were on our heels and that’s kinda disappointing in that sense. I think we’re much better than that, in terms of handling pressure.
We’re not always physical in practice and that’s a fault of mine, until we do that, we will struggle in games like this where teams want to be physical,” Kaple added. “I guess we need to wake up a little bit.”
Kaple felt that Emily Siesel played very well but added that it was her normal performance.
“Emily was phenomenal on both ends of the floor,” Kaple said. “I don’t know how many steals she had, defensively she’s a nightmare and she’s 110 percent all of the time and that’s not something I do, she’s just wired that way.”
The Buckettes made 16 of 40 shots from the floor to 15 of 46 for the Tigers. But BC hit 10 of 11 free throws in the fourth period.
“At the end of the day, that’s a 13-point win against a really good team,” Kaple said. “We were able to hit free throws down the stretch, 16 of 19 from the free-throw line is a really good job.”
Buckeye Central won the junior varsity game, 41-29. Ella Evak scored 14 points for the Buckettes. Leah Drown paced the Tigers with 10.
Box score
Seneca East 7 11 14 8 — 40
Buckeye Central 16 15 9 13 — 53
Seneca East (13-3, 8-2 N10): Shots 15-46; 3-pt. shots 4-22 (Mya Ousley 2, Brooke Bordner, Caroline Kagy); Free throws 6-8; Rebounds 25; Turnovers 16. Scoring: Mya Ousley 2 0 6, Brooke Bordner 2 2 7, Makenna Depinet 1 0 2, Kiersten Cook 3 0 6, Amelia Boes 6 4 16, Caroline Kagy 1 0 3.
Buckeye Central (14-1, 10-0 N10): Shots 16-40; 3-pt. shots 5-19 (Claudia Pifher 3, Emily Siesel, Ryley Kantzer); Free throws 9-13; Rebounds 18 (Julia Evak 4); Turnovers 10. Scoring: Emily Siesel 6 6 19, Claudia Pifher 7 7 24, Julia Evak 1 0 2, Kennedy Deppen 1 2 4, Ryley Kantzer 1 1 4.
JV: Buckeye Central 41-29.