It was the season opener for both Crawfordsville and Seeger girls basketball on Thursday when the Patriots made the trip to Cville. The Patriots lost three of their top four scorers from a year ago while the Athenians were without their top scorer and rebounder in senior Taylor Abston. Thursday was also the coaching debut for first-year Crawfordsville coach Joe Ferguson. CHS had the Patriot lead at 20-17 at the 2:44 mark of the third quarter, but from then on it was all Seeger as the visiting Patriots pulled away late for a season-opening 44-23 win.
The game proved to be a defensive battle for most of the game. Neither team was able to find much offense in the early stages. Seeger took a 13-8 lead into halftime before both teams really found their footing in the third. The Patriots used a 17-0 run to put the game out of reach before the Athenians scored their first points of the fourth quarter late with and Addie Hodges made three.
“We have so many new girls on this team so I wasn’t sure what to expect coming into tonight,” Seeger coach Chad Wetz said. “I was very proud of our perseverance because we were shooting such a poor percentage at halftime (2-18 FG). We could have gotten discouraged but I told them to keep shooting and the shots will fall and they did. We were getting good looks just rushing our shot and when we slowed down is when we starting to knock those down.”
While the Patriots shot just 2-18 from the floor at the break, Crawfordsville was just 2-13 from the floor. The difference was for the Patriots is that they attempted 16 free-throws in the first half and made eight of them while CHS attempted 10 and only made three.
In the second half both teams settled in and the Patriots got a big performance off the bench from freshman Cadence White. In her first varsity game White tied with teammate Addison Shrader as the duo each had 13 points.
“The key for Cadence was this past summer,” Wetz said of his talented freshman. “She played in about 30 games for us across the state this summer. That’s when she realized she could contribute right away.”
Crawfordsville was led in scoring by Madi Hedrick’s eight points. Molly Pierce, Addie Hodges, and Celeste Moore all had four, and Litzy Huesca ended with three. Despite the loss, Ferguson was overall pleased with how his team played in the season opener.
“I was super happy with how the girls played in the first game,” he said. “I told them there’s lots of things that we can fix, but all of them all small things. I didn’t any major issues from tonight. Our effort was there from the opening tip and played as hard as we could. We do have to learn to not foul as much and have a little bit better rotations. It was difficult to manage our rotations with having a lot of girls in foul trouble.”
For the game Seeger shot 15-45 from the field (33%) and were 4-15 from the three point line. They made 8-18 foul shots, had 23 rebounds and turned the ball over just 11 times.
Crawfordsville (0-1) was 7-26 (27%) from the field and 4-9 from three. They went 5-12 from the foul line and grabbed 33 rebounds. Cville did turn the ball over 26 times.
Both teams will be off until Tuesday. Seeger will travel to South Newton looking to go 2-0 while Cville will travel to North Putnam.
