Carey pulls away from Arcadia

By BRIAN HEMMINGER

City editor

CAREY — The Carey girls basketball team went back to basics Thursday in a nonconferance matchup against Arcadia.

The team focused on passing, cutting and feeding the ball to the post, and it worked as the Blue Devils ran away with a 42-22 victory.

Arcadia’s Emily Rank kept the Redskins in the game early, scoring her team’s first six points as Carey took a 13-9 at the end of the first quarter. Her teammate Lili Mundy forced a Carey timeout when she drilled a 3-pointer to bring Arcadia’s deficit down to one point at 15-14.

“We go on streaks,” Arcadia coach Randy Baker said. “We started out the game really well and then we make a couple mistakes and it gets away from us.”

And the game definitely got away from Arcadia from that point on.

Carey (4-4) finished the first half on a dominant 16-1 run, with five different players hitting baskets, including a buzzer-beating 3-pointer from Meghan Littlejohn to give the Blue Devils a commanding 31-15 lead at halftime.

“I told them at the timeout, I said, ‘We’re better than we’re playing,’” Carey coach Keith O’Flaherty said. “I said, ‘Get out there and pick up the pace, get more energy out of you guys,’ because they came out flat. We came out of that timeout and they picked their energy up and their effort and that paid off for us. That was a good run at the end of the second quarter there.”

While it didn’t result many turnovers, Carey continually pressed Arcadia (0-7) in the first half, taking advantage of its strength in numbers. 

“A lot of Arcadia’s players played two quarters earlier (in the junior varsity game) so they were a bit wore out and we really wanted to get some press on ‘em and make ‘em work a bit,” O’Flaherty said. “My team is fairly deep, so we can get a good rotation of girls in and that helps a lot with running teams down. They looked like they was getting a little tired and that was kind of our goal.”

Arcadia struggled down the stretch, scoring just four points in the third quarter and three in the fourth quarter.

“We’ve got an extremely young team,” Baker said. “We don’t have any numbers and they’re out there working their butts off. That’s why it was so nice to have the two quarters of JV so we can give these younger kids some positive time on the floor. I’m playing kids in varsity games that aren’t quite ready yet. It takes time. They’re young kids, I love ‘em to death. We’ve got to keep at it. We’re taking baby steps right now.”

Carey’s biggest strength in the game was its size as the Blue Devils worked their half court offense and consistently looked inside for shots in the post area. 

Forwards Rylee Row, Julia Brodman and Logan Wenzinger all had strong performances, scoring eight, eight and seven points, respectively.

“We knew we had them outsized a bit and we wanted to exploit that with Logan in there and other posts too,” O’Flaherty said. “It took us a while to get that rhythm, but when we finally did it, it paid off for us. It’s nice having a 6-foot-1 girl and having that height when the other team’s a bit shorter.”

Arcadia struggled to defend both inside and out, leaving Carey shooters open for 3-pointers or layups. 

“We’ve got to understand what we want to do on post defense,” Baker said. “We made it a little easy for them to get the ball in there and then our help side was committing too much, which left other things open. Rotations weren’t solid like they should be. We’ve got to hedge and help, but we can’t turn our backs and leave people open. We’ve got to learn to be tougher. It’ll come, hopefully.”

With a six different players scoring at least five points, O’Flaherty said he was happy with his team’s balance offensively.

“That’s what I like about this group — we don’t rely on any one person to do all of our scoring,” he said. “They all work well together and it’s hard to defend a team when each night someone could step up and be the leading scorer. It’s nice to have that balance so teams have got to defend everybody.” 

Carey also won the junior varsity game, 18-14, which lasted two quarters. Raigan Kessler led the Blue Devils with six points.

Next up, Carey travels to Upper Sandusky at 6 p.m. Tuesday.

ARCADIA (0-7): Rank 4-0-8, Mundy 2-0-5, Best 0-3-3, Keefe 1-0-2, Wiler 1-0-2, Johnson 0-1-1, Burnett 0-1-1. Totals 8 5-10 22.

CAREY (4-4): Row 3-2-8, Brodman 4-0-8, Wenzinger 3-1-7, Wentling 2-0-5, Littlejohn 2-0-5, Yost 2-1-5, Plott 2-0-4. Totals 18 4-9 42.

3-point goals: Littlejohn, Mundy, Wentling.

Score by quarters

Arcadia 9                6                4                3                — 22

Carey    13              18              7                4                — 42

Junior varsity: Carey won 18-14 (two quarters).