GREENFIELD
In a battle of two youthful teams on Thursday night, there was one big difference.
One team was youthful with experience.
With much of its same lineup back from a year ago, visiting Greenwood handed Greenfield-Central a 56-20 defeat in both teams’ girls basketball season opener.
The Cougars are young, too, but most of their lineup is made up of first-year varsity players.
“You watch the film from last year, the team that we played is exactly the same team they had. The team we had is not even close to the same team,” Greenfield-Central head coach Bradley Key said. “They went through the wringer last year being young, but they’re all back now.
“We have a full new team, for the most part. It’s not an excuse. We just have to get better.”
Greenfield-Central won a low-scoring battle in last year’s season opener at Greenwood, 27-19.
Greenwood has just one senior, Quinn Kelly, who was the Lady Woodmen’s co-leading scorer on last year’s 3-15 team with a 9.4 scoring average.
“The one thing I’ve told the girls, there’s no substitute for experience,” Greenwood coach Justin Bennett said. “This being year No. 4 for me and year No. 3 for a lot of girls in the program, that experience showed today. They were more comfortable in their roles, more comfortable doing things we’ve asked them to do in the past.”
Greenwood took control in the final two-plus minutes of the first quarter and never looked back. An 8-0 run in the final 2:29 of the period gave the Woodmen an 11-3 lead.
Most of it came from junior guard Lily Howe. With the game tied 3-3, Howe scored off a steal, hit a jumper on the next possession and added another bucket after a theft for a 9-3 Greenwood advantage.
Howe, a junior, led all scorers with 16 points, all in the first half.
“Defensively, Lily Howe is our catalyst,” Bennett said. “She really gets after it. Her and (junior guard) Emily Metzger love to guard those two basketball handlers. They take pride in their defense and I think everybody else follows their lead with that.”
The Greenwood defense helped force 14 first-quarter turnovers. The Cougars had 21 miscues in the first half, helping the Woodmen build a 27-12 lead.
“I thought Greenwood did a good job putting a lot of pressure on us,” Key said. “Our inexperience definitely showed early on. Add not hitting a lot of shots, it snowballed from there.”
Greenwood got points from nine different players. Josie Ochsner scored nine points off the bench, while Kelly and Brooklyn Bell each scored eight. The Woodmen got 18 points from their bench.
