BROOKVILLE — For the Brookville Lady Raiders basketball team, Friday wasn’t going to be like Wednesday.
Two days closer to Christmas, sure, but after Wednesday’s disappointing one-point loss at Keystone, the clear theme was to get a far better effort on the energy level against visiting Moniteau Friday.
Mission accomplished. The Lady Raiders jumped out to a 33-13 halftime lead and eased through to a 50-33 Keystone Shortway Athletic Conference win.
“We really hit it hard yesterday and we had a good focused practice on being a little more intense in the half court, not relying so much on any sort of full-court pressure and just trying to do it in the half court,” said Powell of Thursday’s practice after a 41-40 non-KSAC matchup loss to Keystone. “We worked hard on that and I thought we were able to do that tonight. We had pressure, both full and half and I thought we did a good job converting those in the first half to points. We wanted to jump out early.”
The Lady Raiders (5-2 overall, 2-0 KSAC) never trailed, leading 16-5 by the end of the first quarter and continuing that run into the second, extending the advantage to 20-5 57 seconds into the quarter.
Up 33-13 at halftime, the Lady Raiders’ largest lead swelled to 44-22 after an Ally Wilson basket with 1:04 left in the third quarter and then again at 46-24 after an Emma Northey bucket 43 seconds into the fourth.
Northey led all scorers with 14 points while Samantha Whitling scored 12 points and Lily Plyler came off the bench to scored 10 points.
The Lady Raiders won the turnover battle, forcing 31 Moniteau giveaways compared to 15 of their own.
“We took care of the ball better tonight. We had 33 turnovers last game and we obviously talked a lot about that yesterday as well,” Powell said. “Give the kids credit. We did clean that up.”
The shooting numbers weren’t great with the Lady Raiders going 20-for-68 from the field, compared to Moniteau’s similar shooting number of 12-for-41. However, the Lady Raiders got 27 more shots. Brookville, although being outrebounded 43-39, did collect 23 offensive rebounds. All of Whitling’s seven rebounds were offensive.
Moniteau (2-5, 0-1), playing without injured starting junior point guard Sayge Brunst, got nine points and 10 rebounds from Charlotte Thompson. Maddy Eury scored eight points.
Both of the Lady Raiders’ losses are non-league losses to KSAC foes Keystone and C-L back in the season-opener. They’ll play those two again when it counts in the standings.
“You have to win your home league games and tonight was our second home league game and that was an emphasis beforehand,” Powell said. “You have to win these games and then you have to steal a couple on the road. So we’re happy with being 2-0 in the KSAC and we have a really tough DuBois team coming in Monday.
“Tonight was a good tone-setter for that. I liked the energy and I think the kids are refocused again and we’ll see where that takes us Monday.”
Monday’s Brookville Christmas Tournament schedule has the junior varsity matchups on Monday starting at 3 p.m. with DuBois Central Catholic vs. Brockway and then Brookville vs. DuBois at 4:30 p.m. The varsity matchups are the same at 6 and 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday, the JV consolation and championship games are at noon and 1:30 p.m. with the varsity consolation and championship games set for 3 and 4:30 p.m. approximately.
BROOKVILLE 50, MONITEAU 33
Score By Quarters
Moniteau 5 8 11 9 — 33
Brookville 16 17 11 6 — 50
Moniteau –33
Maddy Eury 3 1-2 8, Charlotte Thompson 2 5-6 9, Emily Matz 1 1-2 3, Alyssa Thompson 2 2-5 6, Annalyce Baptiste 1 0-0 2, Gracie Hartle 1 0-2 2, Kellynn Patsubay 1 0-0 2, Taylor Grace 0 0-0 0, Madi Prorok 0 0-0 0, Anna James 0 1-2 1, Brinn Kirchner 0 0-0 0. Totals: 12 10-19 33.
Brookville –50
Ally Wilson 2 0-2 4, Whitney Guth 2 1-2 6, Emma Northey 6 2-2 14, Kaida Yoder 2 0-0 4, Samantha Whitling 4 3-6 12, Lily Plyler 4 2-2 10, Laela Kammerdeiner 0 0-0 0, Evie Smith 0 0-0 0, Leah Rafferty 0 0-0 0, Julie Greeley 0 0-0 0, Ainsley Blake 0 0-0 0. Totals: 20 8-14 50.
3-pointers: Moniteau (Eury), Brookville 2 (Guth, Whitling).