One big key proved to be a huge factor in Saturday afternoon’s Hoosier Hills Conference girls basketball game between Columbus East and Floyd Central — defense.
It was the Olympians that ended playing much stronger defense with their length and size inside that would propel them to a season opening 48-37 victory over the Highlanders.
“We weren’t very good on the offensive end, but we’ll get better during the year, but our defense showed,” East sophomore Koryn Greiwe said. “Every game, we’ll get better. It was a good win to start off the season.”
East (1-0, 1-0) had a 5-1 lead midway through the first quarter. The Olympians defense early kept the Highlanders from getting a lot done inside. However, Floyd Central was able to give themselves opportunities at the foul line to eventually tie the game at 5-5. With about 30 seconds left in the opening quarter, Albany Speer drained a 3 from the left wing to make it 8-5 in favor of East after the first quarter of play.
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Greiwe, made a couple transition layup and hit four foul shots to help extend the East lead to 17-9. The Highlanders kept the game from being a runaway by getting more opportunities at the free throw line and cutting the deficit to 19-12 at halftime.
The Olympians jumped out to a 6-0 run to start the second half to extend the lead to 25-12. Brown played four freshman and a sophomore for much of the third quarter and start of the fourth. The youth of the Olympians did their part and extending the lead further to 34-21 following another 3 from Speer to end the third quarter.
Gabby Dean got a couple buckets in the post inside to start the fourth quarter with East leading 40-23. A couple more 3s from Greiwe and Kaitlyn Dougherty capped off the game leading 46-27.
Floyd Central didn’t give up, though, scoring 10 straight points to cut it to 46-37, but the Highlanders ran out of time.
“We’re going to get better offensively, and we know that. We left a lot of points out there,” East coach Danny Brown said. “It’s a good start and we’re leading the Hoosier Hills Conference at 1-0.”
Greiwe finished with a game-high 20 points, and Dean added seven points to go along with 10 rebounds and five blocks.
“We’re looking to get (Dean) the ball a little bit more. She had a lot of blocked shots today,” Brown said. “When we had our biggest lead, I looked at there and we had four freshman and a sophomore, so that’s really encouraging. Everybody got some time off the bench. I like this team, it’s going to be exciting.”
