WC Girls meet goals, still fall to North Nodaway

Worth County's girls met all of their team goals against North Nodaway but still fell 47-29 as they shot 14% from the field. "Our goal coming into the game was to take more shots than North Nodaway, get more rebounds, and get fewer turnovers," said coach April Healy. "We did all that." But the nature of the game is that when you fix one thing, other things go wrong -- the lid was on the rim for much of the night for Worth County. The goal now for Worth County is to build on the positives from the game and win some games once the ball starts dropping through the basket.

North Nodaway had trouble getting the ball in against Worth County's press and the Tigers built up a 6-2 lead. Brooke Gilland got a putback and then Lauren Null added another putback and scored from the left side off a Kiley Reynolds inbounds pass. But then Erin Greeley scored off a drive and then Cambry Schluter beat the press to tie it at 6. Liz Novak hit from the left baseline to make it 10-6.

Kacey Smyser beat the Hopkins press and made a nice up and under move on the much taller Taylor Miller for a basket to make it 10-6, but then North Nodaway started to come back as Worth County was doing too much hacking and fouling -- Worth County had 10 fouls at one point while North Nodaway only had three. Brittany Bix's free throw made it 11-10 with 3:45 left. Kacey Smyser scored off an inbounds pass from Liz Novak to make it 12-11, but then Leslie Birkenholz tied it up with a free throw and then Schulter took over the game for North Nodaway, scoring the next eight points for her team to make it 20-15 with 4:50 left in the third quarter.

That opened up Taylor Miller, who began posting up at will on Worth County, getting five points to make it 26-17 as the Mustangs rebounded at will during that stretch. In the closing seconds of the third quarter, a play that typified the way the ball was bouncing happened -- there was a loose ball situation, players on both sides were scrambling after it, and the ball bounced right to Nikki Larabee, whose shot at the buzzer put North Nodaway in double digits at 28-17.

Brooke Gilland drove to the basket to break the scoring drought, but then soon afterwards picked up her fifth foul, which took away Worth County's defensive stopper. The Tigers finally got untracked offensively by attacking the basket a lot more and getting on the line, but they could not get back in the game as they could not buy a stop with Gilland on the bench. Liz Novak hit three free throws for Worth County, Kristin Andrews hit one, Claire Andrews scored from inside off a pass from Kacey Smyser, Lauren Null hit a pair of free throws, and Kiley Reynolds scored from outside in the closing seconds for Worth County.