With guns that couldn’t miss, Newport defeated the Husky girls basketball team 78-35 Friday night at Newport.
“We ran into a team that shot 58.8 percent, and most of their shots were from outside,” Coach Dave Goetz said. “They’ve got that girl, Riley Peterson – She’s the real deal. We didn’t have an answer for her in the first half.”
The Huskies shot just 29.8 percent, Goetz said, but “they played a good game. They’re doing some things much better now than they were a month ago.”
Although the score seems to say something else, “the girls did a pretty good job defensively,” Goetz said. “That’s not indicative of how the girls played.”
The Huskies forced 17 turnovers and had only 19, Goetz said. That’s an improvement on that statistic. The big difference for Newport was an ability to hit the hoop on outside shots.
The Huskies ran a box-and-one to deal with Peterson, but Newport started getting shots from other players, Goetz said. “This is by far the best outside shooting team we’ve played.”
The Huskies turned up their performance on offense, with several scoring better than average, Goetz said. Ashley Danielson scored 10 to lead the Huskies. She averages 6.9 points per game.
Paige Niemi, who averages 6.3 per game, scored eight. Hillary McCartin who averages 4.1 per game, added six points; Nicole Fagan, five; Riley Cole, two; Alex Thompson two; and Jenny Hamn, two. One of the Huskies’ heavy hitters, Hamn fell short of her eight-point-per game average.
Thompson sustained a possible concussion about four minutes into the game, Goetz said. He was hoping to have her back by Tuesday night.
“We’re going to get after Central and Philomath this week and see if we can’t come up with something,” Goetz said. The Huskies travel to Philomath on Friday after facing Central on Tuesday.
They host Taft on Tuesday, and “we need everybody and their grandparents to come out on that game,” Goetz said.