LA CENTER — No basketball teams look forward to dealing with adversity, but for the La Center girls basketball team, it dealt with it quite well Thursday night.
Case in point in the Wildcats’ 56-43 home victory over Seton Catholic was seeing not only how they’d react to playing their first game in nine days with just 90 minutes of practice time over the past week, but also playing without sophomore guard and leading scorer, Taylor Stephens.
Stephens was on the bench, but not in uniform Thursday; she served a WIAA-mandated one-game suspension after two technical fouls in the team’s previous contest, last week’s 72-34 win over Castle Rock.
How would the Wildcats respond?
Pretty well, in fact.
Molly Edwards posted a game-high 20 points, including four 3-pointers and forward Taylor Mills added a double-double of 16 points and 10 rebounds, as the Wildcats (12-0 overall) pulled away late from a feisty Cougars team in a battle of the lone 1A Trico League’s unbeatens.
“We needed that,” head coach Herm VanWeerdhuizen said. “We needed a good test to see where we’re at.”
It was the bench and role players that Mills and VanWeerdhuizen was impressed with the most. Alyssa McKnight (three points) started in place of Stephens, who is averaging a Clark County-best 19.4 points per game, Laynie Erickson had nine rebounds, and she and Edwards combined for 11 steals.
“It gives them more experience for down the road,” Mills said of the bench.
Seton (9-2 overall, 4-1 league) kept it close in the first half behind its 3-point shooting; it was a 21-20 LC lead at halftime, as Amy Frazier drilled a left-corner 3 just before the halftime buzzer to make it a one-point game.
Facing a double-team all night, Mills, though, turned it up in the third quarter. She scored 10 of her 16 points in the third quarter to push the LC lead 14 at the end of the third quarter.
Then came the hot outside Seton shooting again. Buckets in three straight possessions, including a pair of 3s by Frazier and Tiana Scruggs, all of a sudden made it a single-digit game again at 46-39 with 3 minutes, 21 seconds to play.
“Seton does that to us,” VanWeerdhuizen said. “…They’re a well-coached team. Seton gave it they’re all tonight.”
Amy Frazier led the Cougars with 10 points and Kailey Beckwith added nine.
