NEN Girls Struggle vs. Albany Zone, Fall 34-28

It was two completely different teams that showed up last Tuesday night when Northeast Nodaway's girls played Albany. The Bluejays led Albany 8-2 after one quarter. But after Albany switched from a man to man to a zone, Northeast looked lost and struggled the rest of the way, falling 34-28. The focus of the game for Northeast was to speed the game into a up-tempo game and use their depth to their advantage. But Albany, after the first quarter, was able to successfully dictate the tempo to their advantage by slowing the game to a crawl.

The Bluejays are a young team this year with only one senior, which means that the team will have to find someone to step up. "We had a great first quarter, and then we struggled against their zone," said Coach Vance Proffitt. "We need to find someone to step up and take control and be a leader." The only player to score for Northeast was Taryn Farnan, who had a career high 10 points on 8 of 12 free throw shooting. Her ability to go to the basket and draw contact kept Northeast in the game. But nobody else scored more than four. "Defensively, we played well; we held them to 34 points," said Proffitt. "But our offense is going to be a struggle until we have someone step up and score. We're a young team this year, so it will come with experience."

After the first quarter, Albany whittled down the Northeast lead to 14-12 despite five points for Taryn Farnan in the period. Northeast was forcing too many passes on offense and did not have enough patience to break down the Albany zone and did not have enough outside shooting to force them out of it. The second half featured four ties as neither team could take over. But then Albany showed a lot of different things that they had not shown in the past; shooter Megan Poppa showed a newfound ability to drive to the basket for some points and Morgan Combs, normally a rebounding specialist, showed a newfound baseline jumper. Albany's advantage in experience paid off as both Poppa and Combs had 5 each in the last four minutes and Northeast gave up a critical offensive board that allowed Albany to go up two scores with 1:35 left for the first time in the game.

Taryn Farnan led the scoring for Northeast with 10 points. The Bluejays got seven players in the scoring column including two freshmen; the focus will be to use their depth to their advantage in upcoming games as well as showing more patience against zones and valuing every possession in low-scoring games. Jill Spire and Kerrigan Adwell had 4 each, Dallis Coffelt and Claudia Wiederholt had 3 each, and Kaysie Wiederholt and Brianna Riley, a pair of sophomores, had 2 each.