HART — Hart rolled over county foe Hesperia Tuesday night, 68-13, handing the Panthers their seventh straight defeat.
The win was a nice palate-cleanser for the Pirates after taking losses to two tough non-league opponents - Kent City and Morley-Stanwood - in their previous two games.
“It was good to get some kids some confidence back,” Hart coach Ron Williamson said. “As a team, you don’t want too many games like this, but it’s good to have a couple where you can relax a little bit and just go out and have fun.”
The Pirates raced out of the starting gates with strong defense, which kept Hesperia from getting into its offense. That meant a lot of turnovers, and those turnovers produced some easy baskets.
Hart led 14-0 just over four minutes into the game after Rilynn Porter knocked down a three-pointer, forcing a Hesperia timeout. The Pirates then built that lead up to 21-0 after a quarter. Things didn’t change much from there, though Hesperia did manage to slow the Pirates down the last few minutes of the second quarter. Still, that left the Panthers with a 40-8 deficit at halftime.
Hart substituted liberally in the second half and got all 10 of its players into the scorebook. Reese Smith led the way with 14 points, and Porter added 12. Zoily Sarabia got into double digits too, with 10 points.
“We only have 10 girls on the team anyway, so it’s good to get some kids that haven’t played in a little bit because we’ve had some tough games,” Williamson said. “I think Scottville was the last game that I was able to get everybody in, so it’s good to get a game like this.”
Smith and Porter, a potent inside-outside combination, have been the centerpiece of the team all season, though Williamson said the Pirates need to build depth behind them to reach the heights they hope to reach.
“We count on them for a lot of things,” Williamson said. “Reese has really put in some effort on rebounding lately, which we need from her...We can’t count on them to do everything, but we need to be able to count on them to help lead us through their efforts and their experience of being (part of) the previous teams.”
Hesperia, meanwhile, saw a couple of bright spots as some young freshmen were put in new situations and handled it well, coach Ty Elenbaas said. However, turnovers continue to be an issue for the young team. Sarissa Conkle and Sophia Fraser each had four points in the game.
“We’re still trying to get that mindset of knowing when to attack and knowing when to move the basketball,” Elenbaas said. “I’d like to see more growth in that kind of thing, and it would be nice if it was fixed now. That’s going to continue to be the bane of our existence. When the other team gets more opportunities to shoot than you do, (other stuff) doesn’t really matter.
“You show up to a game like this, and the nice thing about playing a team the second time is that you can measure how we’ve grown. A game like that, sometimes it’s hard to pull a lot of things out of it, but there’s a couple girls we were pretty proud of there.”
