Slow start no problem for Rams in 67-52 victory
Glenwood’s Abby Hughes looks for room to shoot surrounded by Shenadoah defenders in the Rams’ 67-52 win Friday. Hughes scored 17 of her 19 points in the first half.
It was another slow start followed by an explosive second quarter for Glenwood in its 67-52 win over Shenandoah.
The Class 4A, No. 1 ranked Rams actually trailed 14-13 after a rough first quarter that saw them turn the ball over six times and look of synch offensively. Glenwood got off to similar slow starts in its final two games before the holiday break before pulling away over the final three quarters.
“It’s kind of been our M.O. here this season to get off to a slow start. We just keep the momentum and wear things down and that’s kind of what happened again,” said Glenwood coach Bryan Rasmussen.
Rasmussen felt the Fillies’ triangle-and-two defense with two defenders face guarding leading scorers Madison Camden and Jenna Hopp threw his team off a bit early.
“We certainly weren’t expecting that,” he said. “We’re prepared for lot of different defenses but when they threw that us it caught us off guard.”
The Rams’ quickly figures out to open the second quarter.
Glenwood (8-1 overall, 6-1 in the conference) leaned on its defense in the second quarter to help jump start its offense. Two quick steals and a stop defensively led to a 7-0 run in just 1:04. Three minutes and a 13-2 run later, the Rams were back in control and ahead 26-15. They would take a 34-22 lead into halftime.
“That was big for us,” Rasmussen said of the second quarter run. “We got some shots to fall and played some pretty good defense. We still gave up too many second chance points but I thought there was a stretch there where really controlled the boards.”
The Rams’ lead would quickly swell to 45-24 thanks to an 11-4 run to open the third quarter.
The margin would get to as many as 26 before Rasmussen pulled his varsity regulars.
Defensively, the Rams forced 18 turnovers on a night Rasmussen ran as many as five different defensive schemes at the Mustangs.
“We were expirementing with a lot of different trapping schemes and a lot of different defenses,” he said. “I think we had four or five different defenses we threw out tonight. We’re trying to get better at each one of them and work to be more comfortable with what we see from our opponent on the defensive side. I thought we did a good job going from one to another.”
Offensively, Abby Hughes scored 17 of her game-high 19 in the first half. Camden added 13 points, Brynlee Arnold 10 and Hopp nine.
Ava Wolf scored 16 to lead Shenandoah.