GALION — Crestline and Galion entered Friday night’s girls’ basketball season-opener in a similar boat. Both teams are quite young; Galion with one senior and three freshmen and Crestline with two seniors and four freshmen.
And both teams are led by first-year head coaches, Mickie Spears at Crestline, and Carson Early at Galion.
As one might expect, both teams had up-and-down nights.
Neither team shot the ball well. Galion was 11 of 50 from the floor to seven-for-39 for the Bulldogs. But Galion got 11 points in each of the second and third periods to down the Bulldogs, 31-22.
Early said that being part of the Galion program for 11 years helped him move into the top spot.
“It just gets emotional, seeing the girls have fun and come out and play hard,” Early said. “It’s exciting to see that never-quit attitude, the way they come in and just keep fighting.
“I know, sometimes in the past, it was easy for teams because we kinda gave up a little bit,” he added. “We just have that never-quit attitude and things were going our way.”
Spears felt that working with his extremely youthful team has been a process.
“We have been working hard on teaching the girls the fundamentals,” Spears said. “We’re trying to get these girls ready to play at this level.”
Crestline guard Kennedi Sipes scored 10 of her game-high 14 points in the first half as the Bulldogs held an 11-10 lead midway through the second period.
But Galion guard Cameron Eckert scored seven of her team-high 12 points in the final 3:12 of the period to take an 18-11 lead at the break.
“(Eckert) was one of the girls I talked to before the season began and told her, ‘You are going to have to help lead this team.’ She’s the point guard and she has to lead,” Early said.
Galion led by as many as 14, 29-15, with 1:52 left in third period on an Audrey Glew free throw.
Crestline did get a Sipes basket to cut the deficit to 12, 29-17, entering the final frame.
“I thought we played good defense tonight,” Early said. “It took us a little bit to get our shooting going, it definitely took a while to get out shot flowing. We were shooting too much from the outside, so we talked to them about driving in more and getting to the basket.
“We changed things up (defensively) and kinda face-guarded Sipes there; she was hurting us in the first half,” he added.
As sometimes happens to young teams, the two squads combined for just one field goal in the fourth period, a 3-pointer from Crestline freshman Kori Nechovsky early in the frame.
In the frame, the Bulldogs went one-for-14 to zero-for-13 from the Tigers.
“We actually played a lot better tonight than we have in our three scrimmages,” Spears said. “We really had some girls come out of their shells tonight and they played hard.
“We want this team to be competitive and we can do that,” Spears added.
Crestline, however, struggled from the line, hitting just six of 19 shots from the stripe.
“The thing is, we work on free throws every day and we shoot every day,” Spears said. “I’m hoping those were just first-game jitters.”
Box score
Crestline 3 8 6 5 — 22
Galion 7 11 11 2 — 31
Crestline (0-1): Shots 7-39; 3-pt. shots 2 (Kennedi Sipes, Kori Nechovsky); Free throws 6-19; Rebounds 28; Turnovers 15. Scoring: Brooklyn Gregory 1 3 5, Kennedi Sipes 5 3 14, Kori Nechovsky 1 0 3.
Galion (1-0): Shots 11-50; 3-pt. shots 3 (Cameron Eckert 3); Free throws 6-12; Rebounds 36; Turnovers 12. Scoring: Brianna White 2 0 4, Cameron Eckert 4 1 12, Dezi Lester 1 0 2, Maddie Beck 0 2 2, Elliott Freyman 0 1 1, Audrey Glew 4 2 10.