Fast start leads Henry-Senachwine to 39-18 win over Streator

STREATOR — The Henry-Senachwine girls basketball team came to play in Tuesday’s game against Streator at Pops Dale Gymnasium.

The Mallards, using a tough 2-2-1 full-court defense which led to 10 Bulldogs’ turnovers in the opening eight minutes, scored the contest’s opening 20 points and eventually posted a 39-18 win to improve to 2-5 on the season.

“On (Monday night) at Seneca we were up 16-9 after the first quarter, but from there our focus started slipping,” Henry-Senachwine coach Clinton Schlosser said of the eventual 30-point loss to the Fighting Irish. “We had talked about a game plan and that we wanted to keep track of where their top shooter was all the time, and she ended up hitting eight 3-pointers. So, tonight we talked about keeping focus throughout and also being aware of where No.11 (Ava Gwaltney) was on the floor. Our goal was to keep her under six points, and while we still gave her way too many open looks, we did a pretty good job in that regard.”

The visitors used the full-court pressure, as well as six points each from Brynna Anderson and Lauren Harbison, and four points apiece from Rachel Eckert and Kaitlyn Anderson to jump out to a 20-1 lead after the opening quarter

“We hadn’t really worked on that press, in fact really this is the first game we’ve used it,” Schlosser said. “It still needs work obviously, but I’m hoping we’ll be able to use it more as the season moves on when we think it will be effective.”

In the second quarter, Kaitlyn Anderson netted two more hoops and Harbison swished her third triple to give H-S a 29-4 advantage at halftime.

Kaitlyn Anderson led the Mallards with a double-double of 11 points, 11 rebounds and three steals. Harbison finished with nine points, four rebounds and five steals, Brynna Anderson had eight points, six rebounds and five steals and Eckert added seven points, two rebounds and four assists.

“All these girls have a tremendous winning attitude coming off a successful volleyball season, but we have to figure out how to translate that over to basketball,” Schlosser said. “We’ll get there.”

Gwaltney and Maddy Martin opened the second half with back-to-back 3-pointers and later Isabel Gutierrez nailed a long deuce to make it 34-12 heading to the fourth. Martin started the final period with a rebound basket, followed by a layup by Maddie Wahl.

Martin recorded six points and grabbed seven rebounds, while Gwaltney had six points, five rebounds and two steals for Streator (0-7).

“I still feel we are on the right track,” Streator coach Jacob Durdan said. “Could we have gotten off to a worse start tonight? Probably not, but the girls kept working and really, I felt, put together a solid last three quarters. We had a pretty good first half against Herscher (Monday night) and a good last three quarters tonight. It’s a little bit of a rollercoaster for us right now. We show flashes of what we can do, but we just haven’t found the consistency we need yet.

“We didn’t shoot the ball well (17%) and some of that was Henry-Senachwine’s pressure on defense. They also had the advantage of experience on their side with a number of those girls either four-year starters or with a couple years of varsity action.

“We’ll get back to work (Wednesday) at practice and continue to work on getting better.”

Henry-Senachwine is back in action on Thursday with a Tri-County Conference game at Midland. Streator also returns to the floor on Thursday with an Illinois Central Eight Conference contest at Reed-Custer.