VEEDERSBURG – Fountain Central’s girls hoops team continues to impress with a 49-21 win over Crawfordsville.
The Mustangs move to 5-2 on the season, while the Athenians fall to 0-4. They jumped out early, scoring the first 12 points of the game, and never looked back.
“We lost to Crawfordsville last year, so there was a little revenge built into tonight,” FC coach Sam Karr said. “It was a last-second shot, but they won, and we reminded every one of the players who were there about that. It gave us a little extra motivation on a Tuesday night.”
The starters did nearly all the damage on the scoreboard for the Mustangs, although they rotated a plethora of subs in and out all night as they worked on a variety of schemes.
“We are playing nine or 10 people,” Karr noted. “We’ve got a lot of work to do. We might have played our best half of basketball in the two years I have been here last week (in a win over) Lafayette Jeff, but we have a lot of games coming up, and we need this court time. We will have like nine games in about 18 days and that means so little practice time. We used tonight to look at a lot of player combinations and schemes. Some looked pretty good and some didn’t.”
It was the regular suspects who powered the win for the home team.
Freshman Henley Good led the way with 18 points, six better than her season average. Hannah Prickett dropped three treys to finish with 13, while Kacey Kirkpatrick, making her first start of the season, had 10 points and five boards, as the senior shores up the middle for the Mustangs.
Defensively, they limited the Athenians to a single field goal in both the first and third quarters, and made life miserable for the guards, forcing a majority of the 32 turnovers they caused in the back court. Prickett recorded seven steals with Good and Hoagland adding four each.
“I feel so bad for the girls,” Cville coach Joe Ferguson said. “They work so hard and do so well in practice, but mistakes during the games just compound so fast sometimes, and then they amplify when we don’t look past those mistakes and look forward. Mistakes happen, but you just have to put them behind you and make the next play, the next possession, a better one. That gets difficult sometimes, but we have to remember that it is a long season, and every next play, every next possession, is the most important. We have lots of positives - lots of good shots, lots of good possessions. We just have to keep going, not dwell on the mistakes and the negatives, and look to improve every possession. Of course we hate getting beat, and we want to get better. It’s how we respond that is important. We have to believe in ourselves”
Crawfordsville was led in scoring by Taylor Abston with eight points, but the senior left the game in the second half with a knee injury and did not return. Litzy Huesca had four points and Yuli Torres came off the bench to score four.
The Athenians were 9-of-30 from the floor, hit one three pointer and were 3-of -7 from the line. They had 30 rebounds to FC’s 22.
The Mustangs shot well on Dave Sanders Court, as they were 18-of-35 from the field, 6-of-11 from deep and 7-of-17 from the line.
Both teams have plenty of action coming up.
The Mustangs have a home game Nov 16 against Frontier, and will entertain North Montgomery on Nov. 21. They will take on Southmont, also at home, in December.
The Athenians will take on the Chargers on Thursday in the second game of the first round of the Sugar Creek Classic, which is played at North this year. They will play either South or WeBo on Friday.
