How Patty’s team got its groove back
On Thursday, Dec. 8 the Lady Knights improved to 3-0 with a 58-46 victory over Ohio Cardinal Conference (OCC) rival Lexington, inside the Dungeon at West Holmes High School.
And while West Holmes has beaten its first three opponents – Tri-Valley, Triway and Lady Lex – by an average of 10.6 points, playing only three games over the course of 12 days has made it more difficult for sixth-year head coach Lisa Patterson to sort out the true identity of this year’s team through the early part of the season.
But there are some things Patterson knows without a doubt, and those things all came together during the Lady Knights’ first home game of the year, allowing West Holmes to send Lady Lex home a Lady loser.
“I think Laina is going to be a constant for us,” said Patterson after watching sophomore sensation Laina Snyder start out the season with a double-double – 20 points, 15 rebounds – at Tri-Valley.
And despite the lack of live game action over the season’s first two weeks, Snyder has remained a constant for West Holmes, completing her third-straight double-double during the Lady Knights win over Lexington, pouring in a season-high 23 points and tearing down a season-high 17 rebounds.
Another thing Patterson knows for sure about the 2011-12 Lady Knights... Snyder can’t do it all by herself.
“We need someone else to be in double figures every night,” said the former West Holmes and Walsh University standout after watching Snyder finish with 19 points at Triway, on Saturday, Dec. 3, while junior post Mallori Vess (eight points) and sophomore point guard Emily Molnar (seven) each came up just short of double-digits in the scoring column. “It might not be the same person, but every night we need someone else to be in double figures. Hopefully these other kids get the confidence because I know they’re all capable of being that person. Any number of these kids are capable of getting 10 to 12 points a night, so that needs to happen.”
It did happen against Lexington as junior guard Rachelle Morrison knocked down six of her 14 field goal attempts – including one from beyond the three-point arc – to finish with a season-high 13 points.
“Rachelle certainly stepped up,” said Patterson afterward. “I spoke with her about how we needed some production out of her on the offensive end and she took that to heart. She’s a kid that can score. They were good shot selections and when it’s a good shot selection, she certainly has the green light to do that. I am happy with six-of-14, and I know she’s going to knock down more of those threes in the future.”
Something else Patterson knows all of the Lady Knights need to knock down more of are free throws as she said, “We really need to be around 70 percent,” after seeing her team sink only 15-of-25 attempts (60 percent) from the charity stripe at Triway.
Five nights later her tune had changed for the better.
“If we shoot like that all season long, we’ll be tough to beat,” she said after the 12-point win over Lexington, as West Holmes buried 15-of-16 (93.8 percent) from the foul line, with Vess shooting two-of-two, Molnar four-of-four and Snyder nine-of-10. “And it certainly wouldn’t hurt matters (to get more kids to the line). Laina gets a lot of hers from rebounds, put-backs and that sort of thing. When you’re getting 15, 16, 17 rebounds a night, you’re going to get fouled on those.
“Emily’s free throws come from attacking the basket more than any other guard we have.”
A master of converting scouting into solid game planning, Patterson also knew that West Holmes had to keep Lexington from attacking them from beyond the three-point line.
“We knew they were going to shoot a lot of threes, that’s their strength, but our game plan was to make sure they had no open threes, hands in the face on every shot,” she explained. “And I would say the majority of the time we knew where their shooters were. It was very few open looks that they had, so someone was on them and in their space and we pushed them back away from the three-point line.
“They made one three in the first quarter. That was it.”
In fact, that was the only basket Lexington hit during the opening stanza, as West Holmes took a 7-3 lead into quarter number two and went into halftime holding on to a 24-16 lead thanks to a deep rotation that allowed Patterson to keep fresh legs on the floor.
“We used our bench in the first-half quite a bit,” explained the head coach who has taken every one of her Lady Knights teams to Regionals, except one. “I thought that would help us in the long run and I think it did because he (Lexington head coach Daryl Uhde) only played seven kids and we were able to get 12 in total. We used 10 early on and I think that might be a small factor in not getting into an early rhythm, but I think it paid off in the end.”
Toward the end of the game, rebounding paid off big time as Snyder saved 12 of her 17 boards for the second-half and Vess waited until the fourth-quarter to make her statement on the glass.
“Mallori came up with two or three huge offensive rebounds (five of her seven boards came at the offensive end) in the fourth quarter that were really important to us,” said Patterson, whose team used a 21-18 final quarter to complete the 58-46 win. “Long rebounds that she went clear out to get.
“A lot of our second-half points were generated from rebounding and being a little more patient on offense.”
The Lady Knights patience generated 14 baskets off of assists throughout the game, with Morrison, and junior guard Justice Wright leading the way with three helpers apiece, along with sophomore guard Paiten Strother who came off the bench to dish out three assists, drop in seven points and come away with three steals.
“If you look at the assists and steals, Paiten had a very solid night for us,” explained Patterson, who watched her team run away with 12 steals and force 15 Lady Lex turnovers. “We rattled their point guard [Jaci Rourke] a little bit. I think she does a pretty good job of handling the ball, but we forced her to commit six turnovers, which was very effective for us.
“(Lady Lex) is a group of kids that have played together since they were freshmen and they’re trying to make a statement,” she added. “Their starters are all seniors and this is their last shot at it and they’re putting forth a lot of effort. That’s probably the best Lexington team I’ve seen in a number of years.”
Which tells you just how good this Lady Knights team has a chance to be, especially when it’s able to find its groove.
“It’s hard to establish a rhythm and a rotation of any sort when you’re only playing one game a week,” Patterson lamented. “It’s been difficult to establish any type of flow.”
And yet everything Patterson needed to happen against Lexington all came together... except for one thing.
“If there was a negative, that was the negative,” explained the West Holmes bench boss, who saw her team turn the ball over 16 times, leading to 11 points for Lady Lex. “We would get up 12 or so points and then would turn the ball over two consecutive times. Or, if we were starting to get on a little roll, we would backpedal. We could have just put it away a couple different times.”
But the Lady Knights have plenty of time to straighten out that aspect of their game as well.
After knocking off Lexington, West Holmes has a full-week to wait before playing its fourth game of the season, Thursday, Dec. 15, when the Lady Knights travel to Ashland to take on the Arrows.
Published: December 8, 2011
