By BEAU WICKER
WALTON — Winamac’s girls basketball team went on a decisive third-quarter run en route to pulling away with a 56-41 win over Lewis Cass here Saturday night.
The Warriors (2-0), ranked No. 8 in Class 2A to start the season, are trying to prove they’re still one of the best teams in Class 2A this year despite the loss of standout forward Erika Redweik to graduation. Redweik’s younger sister Sarah Redweik will play a big part in that, and she sure did Saturday night by hitting back-to-back 3-point daggers and scoring eight straight points late in the third quarter to help expand a 28-27 lead to 42-27.
“That probably as much as anything busted the game open,” Winamac coach Jim Swaney said.
Sarah Redweik finished with 14 points. Erika Redweik’s main replacement in the post, Allie DeFries, recorded her second straight solid game as well with game-highs of 18 points and 11 rebounds.
“She’s been our go-to player in the first two games,” Swaney said of DeFries.
Standout point guard Jordan Brandt scored 15 points for the Warriors, and Katy Sommers added seven off the bench.
Meanwhile the Kings (0-2) not only showed how far they’ve come in a year, they showed how far they’ve come in two days. Last season they were handed a 74-34 defeat at Winamac, and then on Thursday night earlier this week at Rossville they were defeated 44-24.
But on Saturday night, again, playing against a highly ranked squad, they were down just one point a minute into the second half.
“I was really disappointed in our game versus Rossville,” Cass coach Lindsay Leffert said. “The girls knew that and I think they were really disappointed in it too. So we did what we needed to do, I told them what we needed to work on in practice, they came out and worked on it really well and then executed it in a game. That’s all you can ask for. We still had almost 40 turnovers but we played a really great game. … If we just can cut our turnovers down a little bit we’ll be pretty good.
“[Winamac’s] one of the best-coached teams and one of the best teams around, so to play that well, they did a great job. I told them that set the bar. You can’t do anything less than that because I know they can do it.”
The Warriors’ fullcourt pressure defense was relentless in causing the plethora of Kings turnovers.
“In the third quarter we played a little better with our press,” Swaney said. “We’re not playing good defense right now. We’re not moving our feet, we’re playing too much with our hands. But we had a little spurt there in the third quarter where we got some easy baskets and that kind of blew the game open.”
The Kings had a balanced scoring attack. Adrienne Ayers led the way with nine points. Kinsey Weaver scored eight, Rachel Aldridge seven, Abby Ropes six and Peyton Klinkhamer five. Aldridge added a team-high seven rebounds.
“We’ve got plenty of girls that are very athletic and can attack,” Leffert said. “We’ve got a couple good outside shooters, and we’ve got some girls who can shoot and attack the basket — we just need to do that more. And most of our girls are pretty good on the free throw line, so we’ve got to use that to our advantage and attack and get to the free throw line.”
