Knight’s get defensive in win over East Mills

A smothering Fremont-Mills’ defensive effort limited East Mills to just nine first half points in a 47-23 Knight victory in Corner Conference girls basketball last Tuesday in Tabor.

The Knights (2-0 overall, 2-0 in the conference) used their aggressive, often times full-court, man-to-man defense to make the Wolverines (1-2 overall, 1-1 in the conference) uncomfortable all game long.

Fremont-Mills’ coach Brett Weldon said the defensive approach was something his team just started deploying this year.

“Last year, I don’t think we played any man (defense) so we’re trying to create some scoring opportunities through our defense,” Weldon said. “It’s been an adjustment, playing without fouling but when we don’t foul, we do it okay. But we need to cut fouls down because they went to the free throw line a ton.”

F-M had its own troubles scoring the ball in the first half, leading just 13-8 with 3:06 to go before intermission.

But a 9-1 run, keyed by the defense’s four steals in the spurt, put the Knights up 22-9 at the break.

“Closing out that quarter was huge for us,” Weldon said. “We kept pressure on them and playing a lot of girls and toward the end (of the half) it took its toll on them and we put a little run together.”

The Knights’ lead swelled to 37-17 by the end of the third quarter

For two and a half quarters, the Wolverines’ zone gave the Knights’ trouble. But midway through that third quarter, FM started finding cracks and open passing lanes leading to layups.

“We got tired,” said East Mills coach Blair Holman. “We got absolutely tired and they did a good job of rotating 10 or 11 girls in and out and we only played seven. We got tired there. We need to do a better job there and have some other girls continue to improve and step up so they can give us some breathers.”

The Knights shot just 33.9 percent from the field (18-of-53), including 3-of-16 from behind the three-point line, but Weldon thought his deep bench – 11 different players saw action in the game – and a few halftime adjustments to find pockets in the Wolverines’ defense made the difference.

“We know we’re going to have to play against a lot of zones so that’ something we’ve tried to work on, finding that right combinations of players, first of all, that can find those openings, and then we need to see those openings and execute,” Weldon said. “On the bench, we can show them where that is but they have to go out and execute. That’s a huge step. It’s what we talked about at halftime and then applied that in the game.”

Malea Moore led a balanced-scoring attack with 11 points. Kaelynn Driskell added 10 and Kaylee Wright and Lexie Howard eight points each.