The Lady Wave basketball team gave no second chances to the Dayton Dust Devils on the road at Dayton on Friday in a 59-14 victory.
Fallon remains undefeated at 21-0 overall and 12-0 in D1-A while Dayton is 4-17 overall and 1-9 in league. The next team looking for payback against the Lady Wave is Elko, Friday at 6 p.m. in Fallon.
Fallon coach Anne Smith said the game against Dayton was a good opportunity to break down her team’s offense and work on necessities.
“We wanted to work on a few things offensively,” Smith said, “so we put in a few variations to some plays that we had and hoped that we were able to work through them against Dayton. For the most part we were successful on a few tries and not successful on a few others, but overall it was a good to be able to practice against a team that didn’t know. It’s hard to work on things against your own team, so working against a team that doesn’t know what you’re doing was good for us.”
Much like in their game against Dayton in the first half of the season, Smith said her team was preparing for Dayton’s Angela Sikora, and Zoey Swisher’s guard duties were geared entirely to stopping Sikora this game.
“(Swisher) was instructed just to play on her, so I think Angela didn’t touch the ball as much as she did the first time that we played them,” Smith said. “She’s still so good and she had some impressive fade away shots. It doesn’t matter how good your defense it, some players are just hard to defend. (Sikora) is a good ball player; so that was the difference I felt, as far as touches on the ball we did our best to limit those by putting a chaser defender on her that wouldn’t leave her.”
Smith said Swisher has been reliable on defense ever since she asked her to step up in the first half of the season, and has stopped whomever the Wave has needed her to stop as a defender.
Caitlyn Welch led Fallon in scoring with 16 points, followed by Leilani Otuafi and Megan McCormick tied at 10 points each and Faith Cornmesser with seven points.
When both Otuafi and Cornmesser were asked how they feel of their team’s undefeated mark during the second half of the season, both expressed confidence in their team to keep the momentum; however, Otuafi said she knew the road would be harder with the other teams aiming for the Wave, and Cornmesser said the other teams would be preparing even more with films of the Lady Wave.
“I think that if we keep working hard we’ll be able to do good against all of the teams even though they have film on us and they’ll be able to know some of our plays and prepare for us,” Cornmesser said.
When asked what they feel they could improve on as individuals and as a team, Otuafi said she needs to get her shot better and feed the post more.
“Faith knows that,” she said gesturing to Cornmesser and laughing. “But as a team I think we just need to fix the little things we had mistakes on.”
Cornmesser said she thinks she needs to shoot more offense, but as a team, the Lady Wave could do better on rebounding from the starting five.
Smith said she is ready for two tough games from two improved teams — Elko and Spring Creek on Friday and Saturday respectively.
Versatility may be the key to victory, since Smith said Elko leans toward a man defense and Spring Creek is inclined to play zone defense.
“We know that they have film on us and that they’ll be able to look for us,” Smith said. “So we have to take care of all the little details that brought us this far, and the girls have got to be ready for a fight.”