CARDINGTON – The Cardington-Lincoln girls basketball may be relying on a new offense and re-vamped defense. But the Pirates continue to be the Pirates in at least one way: winning.
The Pirates used a swarming defense and a fast-paced offense to roll to a 49-29 win over Highland in Knox Morrow Athletic Conference play in Cardington on Wednesday, Dec. 2.
Gone are twin towers Casey Bertke and Hannah Wickline, who led the Pirates to a district championship last season. Bertke averaged 20.9 points, 10 rebounds, 3.1 blocks and 2.5 steals; and Wickline averaged 12.7 points and 7.5 rebounds for Cardington, which finished 24-2 overall and won its sixth consecutive league title.
“The biggest adjustment is that we ran a high-low offense for the first six years because we always had two 6-footers,” Cardington coach Jamie Edwards said. “Now, it’s all five out. Instead of cutting around Casey … we got five out and a lot rules about our cuts and who’s allowed to stop on the block and who’s allowed to stop on the weak-side — things we couldn’t do last year because we had the middle all gunked up.”
This year’s Pirates are shorter. They feature a swarming full-court defense to create offense. When they have the ball, they play five out, hoping to turn speed into points. That combination worked extremely well — especially early — against the Scots.
“With the guards we got, it’s high basketball IQ with speed that’ll get up (in) their face and trap,” Edwards said. “That’s the new-look Pirates.”
Cardington led 16-2 after one quarter and pushed it to 20-2 before visiting Highland made its first field goal from the floor.
The scoring has been a little more democratic. Karsyn Edwards finished with 12 points, Mikayla Linkous added 11 and Beth Hardwick chipped in eight.
The lead blossomed as high as 28 in the second half before the Scots were able to close the gap.
“Once we got to our game plan on how to break the press, we broke the press relatively easily and that wasn’t necessarily a factor anymore,” Highland coach Whitney Levering-Smith said. “But we still let them impact our offense and dictate the speed of the game.”
Cardington’s active defense finished with 26 steals and 10 blocked shots. Karsyn Edwards had six steals, Emalee Artz had five steals, Beth Hardwick had four steals and Dana Bertke had three blocks to keep Highland at bay.
The Scots, who got just one practice before their season-opening 38-34 win at Clear Fork on Nov. 28 because of a two-week quarantine, doubled their practice time heading into Wednesday’s game.
They’re still finding their footing, Levering-Smith said.
“You could tell that my girls got gassed really quickly — especially with that pressure all of the time,” she said. “That impacted our offense. We were slower on our cuts; we were slowing getting to the screens. We didn’t want to cut to the ball because we were taking a breath. (Our conditioning) had a huge impact. We haven’t had the chance to really (work on) the conditioning part of it with our quarantine.”
Emma West topped all scorers with 13 points and added six rebounds and three steals to lead Highland. Maddy Gordon pulled down 12 rebounds to lead the Scots, who outrebounded Cardington 43-27.
