Indian Creek’s Lauren Foster puts up a shot in the lane as Whiteland’s Gwen Higdon defends during Tuesday’s game.
Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
A young Whiteland team came into Tuesday night’s game at Indian Creek looking like a team that had started to hit its stride. The unbeaten Braves, meanwhile, were without the services of injured senior guard Abby Fleetwood, so the Warriors came in harboring at least some hope of pulling off an upset.
Lauren Foster, Faith Wiseman and friends put any such hopes to rest.
Foster scored a game-high 27 points and Wiseman posted a double-double to help the Class 3A No. 3 Braves shake off an early challenge and pull away for a 66-48 victory.
Indian Creek coach Brian Ferris said that the Warriors’ size across the board, with multiple post players on the floor at once, took some time to adjust to and forced his team to find a different way to attack.
“They had to give up something if they did go big,” he said, “and we felt like if they were going big, if we could run, maybe we could wear them down and then they wouldn’t be as productive in the halfcourt around the bucket. By the third quarter, I think we started to see a little bit of wear and tear on them.”
Wiseman asserted herself early, scoring 10 of her 17 points in the first quarter, while Foster offered a steady scoring hand throughout with at least five points in each period. The star juniors got some help from Ayla Lollar (nine points), Savannah Hall (eight) and Kylie Lemmon (five). Wiseman also grabbed 15 rebounds.
The Warriors (6-7) gave the Braves all they could handle early on. After eight straight Creek points put the visitors into an early 12-5 hole, Whiteland punched back with a 7-0 run of its own to tie the game. Gwen Higdon capped the 50-second surge with back-to-back buckets, the latter a 3-pointer with 1:01 left in the opening quarter.
Putbacks by Kylie Lemmon and Wiseman gave the Braves a 19-14 lead by period’s end, though, and 3-pointers from Foster and Ayla Lollar early in the second helped build a 30-18 advantage. Indian Creek (11-0) led by 15 at the half and maintained a double-digit cushion from that point on, getting out in transition off of Wiseman rebounds and Warrior turnovers.
“We haven’t really played any teams that had (multiple bigs) like that,” Foster said, “so it took us a while, but once we figured it out we could just get it and go. We had to focus on transition a lot.”
Despite the defeat, Whiteland coach Kellie Kirkhoff saw plenty that she liked from her squad.
“I’m really proud of our girls and they way they competed tonight,” she said. “Indian Creek is a really good basketball team and they do a lot of different things very well, but I think that for the most part, we competed for most of the game. They kind of beat us up and down the court; we struggled a little bit getting back on defense and then communicating and matching up from there.”
Higdon and Addison Emberton each scored a dozen points to lead the Warriors, with all of Emberton’s points coming after halftime to help keep the game from getting out of hand. Freshman Carly Vondielingen added eight points and classmate Sophia Dyer contributed six points and 12 rebounds.
Indian Creek plays at Edgewood on Friday night; Whiteland hosts Anderson on Saturday evening.
