BATH TOWNSHIP — It’s not easy to win a basketball game shooting 30 percent as a team.
But if you hold your opponent to 23 percent shooting, as St. Marys did in a 42-33 girls basketball win over Bath on Thursday night, it gets easier.
Shania Taylor, with 13 points and 12 rebounds, and Makenna Mele, with 12 points and five rebounds, led St. Marys (10-8, 4-2 Western Buckeye League). Lindsay Singhaus led Bath (11-5, 4-2 WBL) with seven points and 10 rebounds.
St. Marys went ahead early in the second quarter, and except for 18 seconds in the third quarter when Bath held a one-point edge, led the rest of the way.
“This is the way we want the girls to come out and play every night. They just haven’t put a complete game together in quite some time,” St. Marys coach Nikki Miars said. “They did the game plan the way we wanted and it was just nice for things to click.”
Bath, on the other hand, never put the pieces of the puzzle together.
The Wildkittens missed seven of their first eight shots and were 10 of 43 on field goals (23 percent) overall.
“They out-worked us, they out-hustled us. They beat us in every phase of the game. When you play like that, you’re going to have a hard time winning the game,” Bath coach Greg Mauk said.
“We weren’t the same team tonight and give them credit for that. We didn’t shoot well, we didn’t do anything well. It’s one of those games…we’re going to have to rebound from it,” he said.
St. Marys’ game plan relied heavily on getting the ball inside to Taylor, Mele and Quincy Rable, who combined for 30 points and 20 rebounds.
That strategy hit a small setback when Rable picked up her second foul 6 ½ minutes into the game and sat out the rest of the first half.
But St. Marys took a 22-19 halftime lead and was up by five points, 30-25, after three quarters.
“I thought our bench did a good job of stepping up and filling in,” Miars said.
Bath got the lead down to two points, 32-30, with three minutes to play but could not get any closer.
St. Marys shot 30 percent (13 of 43) on field goals. In the second half, the Roughriders were 4 of 21 on field goals and Bath was 3 of 20.
Asked if St. Marys’ defense had something to do with Bath’s shooting problems, Miars said, “As a coach you want to believe that it did. I think we had something to do with them shooting 23 percent. They’re a good shooting team.”
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