CHEYENNE – Early defensive pressure from the Cheyenne East girls basketball team sparked problems for Evanston Saturday afternoon.
The Lady Thunderbirds had 10 steals in the first half and 16 for the entire game on their way to a 65-33 win.
“(Our defense) is a credit to the kids working all week on what we needed to do today,” East coach Eric Westling said. “Every day is another day to get better, and we’ve embraced that this week, and it correlated to (this weekend).”
Boden Liljedahl got the Lady Thunderbirds’ scoring started with a 3-pointer from the left wing after Ruby Jacobsen got an offensive board and kicked it outside.
East continued to play its style of basketball and applied its usual pressure, forcing a steal with 34 seconds to play in the opening frame, which led to a Jacobsen bucket.
Evanston was forced to call a timeout with 3 minutes, 30 seconds to play in the first half after Liljedahl grabbed a rebound and found Cheyenna Alvarado up court for an easy layup, which gave the T-Birds a 22-10 lead.
East (5-1) closed out the half by going on an 11-1 run and took a 33-11 lead into the intermission.
“It was our hardest working week in practice, and we came into (Saturday) with a different kind of energy,” freshman Bradie Schlabs said. “We started to talk more on defense, which helped us collectively as a group.”
Throughout the third and fourth quarters, Evanston tried to apply its own pressure on the T-Birds and experimented with a full-court press. It didn’t find any success.
Liljedahl broke the press on its first attempt and found Darcy Jardine cutting down the court for an open basket. The same sequence happened a couple more times with different players, and the Lady Red Devils were forced to readjust.
“A lot of our kids are comfortable with the ball in their hands,” Westling said. “Teams are going to have to deal with the fact that we have a lot of kids who have the ball in their hands a lot.”
Four players finished in double figures for the T-Birds. Prior to Christmas break, the T-Birds were somewhat frustrated with the shots that were falling, or lack thereof. It was refreshing to see shots fall.
“We’ve started to knock down our easy shots, and that’s just getting those extra game reps in,” Schlabs said. “It’s only going to help further down the season as we play more games.”
Alvarado, Liljedahl and Schlabs each finished with 13 points. Jardine added 11 for the T-Birds. Schlabs finished with five steals, while Liljedahl and Alvarado each had four.
Kambree Brown and Kendall Fessler each netted eight for Evanston.
Not only is it refreshing to see shots fall, but even more refreshing to see more urgency coming from the Lady T-Birds.
“I know we’re playing better than we were before break,” Westling said. “It comes with believing in each other and the coaches. They’re doing that, and it’s paying dividends right now.”
EAST 65, EVANSTON 33
Evanston……............4 9 8 12 – 33
Cheyenne East……11 21 17 15 – 65
Evanston: M. Barker 4, Brown 8, Bradya 0, Mota 0, S. Barker 6, Johnson 0, Sawyer 4, Wilson 0, Fessler 8, Dern 0, Rigby 3.
Cheyenne East: R. Jacobsen 3, Walsh 2, Liljedahl 13, E. Jacobsen 6, Alvarado 13, Jardine 11, Schlabs 13, Marshall 4.
Robert Munoz is a writer for WyoSports. He can be reached at rmunoz@wyosports.net. Follow him on Twitter @rmunoz307.
