Story and photos by Mike Gesler Grant 60 Sparta 45 Grant hasn’t played a game since December 16 as they start the new year with a three game week that started tonight against Sparta and ends with Newaygo on Friday. Sparta, on the other hand, last played on December 29, and while not the same powerhouse team that challenged Newaygo the last two years for the District title, they still cannot be taken lightly with dialed in Junior shooters Makayla Hatchew and Averi Peot. Hatchew from the start let the Tigers know that she would hurt them with any open look as she drained two threes within the first three and a half minutes to help put Sparta up by eight while Grant tried to knock off two and a half weeks of rust. “Obviously there was some rust at the beginning because of break. I mean it’s tough. You want to get practice time in, but you want to allow time with families and stuff like that. So, one of the things that we have been talking about is we are not going to be in our shape when we come out and it showed,” stated Coach Delamater. Then entered Julie Ashbaugh who apparently only needed three and a half minutes to knock off her rust. Julie would get the Tigers rolling with a seven point run of her own and put Grant right back into the game. That definitely helped change the dynamic of play as Grant’s pressure defense overwhelmed Sparta enough for the coach to change tactics on the floor telling his players to, “back off, they’re pressure is too much.” A two-and-one from Emma Thompson would tie the game, and two from Jayci Hance would see the Tigers take the lead. However, a buzzer shot from Sparta ended the first quarter in a 12-12 tie. Sparta gained control again in the second quarter holding the Tiger offense to a mere six points. And while the Tiger defense kept Hatchew to only one three pointer, that opened up the door for Peot who put up eight of Sparta’s thirteen second quarter points. Sparta hit the locker room with a seven point advantage at the half. “We weren’t where we needed to be in terms of getting up and down the floor and some of the pressure on defense, and it was extremely physical,” said Delamater. “We’ve talked about that from day one. Everyone is going to be very physical because we’re little. Morley was a great example of that, and that shocked us at first, that physicality, and it shocked us a little bit here at the beginning of this game. These girls are going to push us around. We talked about that at halftime. You’ve got to battle through that. You’ve got to continue to box out, and it’s going to have to be more rather than a foot from the rim, two foot from the rim, now you’re going to have to box out to make sure they are out of the lane.” Grant came out of the half a different team. The Tigers were not about to just roll over and let Sparta push them around. They stepped up their pressure closing down the lanes. They moved the ball down the court with speed. They picked up the tempo forcing Sparta to make questionable passes and rushed shots. In essence they flipped the table on Sparta and put up forty-two second half points while only yielding twenty points to the Spartans. “I don’t know if it was a product of they kind of got tired because of the tempo of the game. What I’ve seen of them is they haven’t been up and down as much as that. So, I don’t know if they were like hey let’s try to run with them,” stated Delamater. “I said to the girls at halftime, okay let’s run, let’s run some more. I said this before, it’s going to be deep into the season before we are where we need to be, and you could see that tonight. We’re eighteen points at halftime, and then forty-two points in the second half. When we go, we can go. We can get after it.” “Obviously, Julie really spearheads a lot of that,” continued Delamater. “But you have girls like Jayci Hance, Jocee Pleune, and Alexa [Obenauf] finally…and those girls can hit some shots. We’ve got other girls like Emma Thompson who's been out with an ankle injury, and she put in some quality time for us tonight. Reese [Gragg] started for us tonight and put in quality minutes…But man, they’re fun to coach because they battle. They will go out on the floor and just put it all out there and battle to the end. I know I said something about Jocee already, and it’s not going to show up in the stat book. She had nine points tonight, but she has to be considered one of the best on the ball defenders in the area. She can flat out guard anyone. If she was five-nine doing that, there’s nobody that could get by her and she’s a little five-two girl, maybe a hundred pounds on the floor guarding some of these big strong girls and doing a fantastic job.”
Julie Ashbaugh lit it up tonight and led the Tigers with 29 points. Jocee Pleune, as Coach Delamater stated, put up nine with Jayci Hance and Alexa Obenauf each adding seven. Emma Thompson and Madison Thompson had three a piece while Julie Horning shot for two. The Tigers will face another tough opponent tonight taking on the 3-3 Montague Wildcats at home. Game time is seven o’clock.
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