East Union boasted two players with double-doubles and had three players in double figures Saturday as the Lancers closed out the first quarter on a 17-3 run on the way to rolling over Ripon 54-31 in non-league girls basketball action at Dalben Center.

East Union’s Donnese Payne pulled down a whopping 21 rebounds and scored 10 points behind three put-backs.

“Each practice I try and do better,” Payne said. “I fight through when I have to.

“When my teammates pass me the ball I do what I have to do.”

Taylor Snaer of the Lancers (16-4) led all scorers with 16 points and she grabbed 10 rebounds.

“Defense has been our main focus recently,” Snaer said. “I thought we did a pretty good job as a team defensively.”

East Union’s Nylah Dyson stepped up her game Saturday with 14 points along with four rebounds and two steals.

“I have been working on my shot a lot,” Dyson said. “I knew that I had to help out Taylor (Snaer) a little more because she has been hitting 30’s every game.

“So I had a goal and I tried to achieve it.”

The Lancers owned the boards, out-rebounding the Indians by 52-31 and limiting Ripon (7-11) to single digits in each quarter and only 14 points in the second half.

“We have been rebounding well,” East Union coach Jim Agostini said. “Sierra was a taller team as was Manteca and we out-rebounded them both. The girls are working their tails off on the glass. We were swinging the ball around trying to get some looks down under. We were mixing it up the best we could. Our defense was better in the second half.

“Ripon is a good team and hopefully they will go out and win some games in their league the rest of the way.”

Kailee Inderbitzin paced the Indians with eight points and seven rebounds while Drew Peters added seven points, eight rebounds and two blocks.

“I thought we played hard,” Ripon coach Rick Inderbitzin said, “We saw some things that we improved on a little bit, we just didn’t make as many baskets as we should have in the first half.

“Playing East Union is tough because they are so athletic. They convert on a lot of transition points and they have some good shooters. They had a lot of put-backs and we didn’t do a good job of screening out at times. East Union is a good team and they are going to continue in defense of their VOL championship.”

The Lancers will continue their VOL championship defense tonight at 7:30 in Oakdale, and the Indians host Ripon Christian on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Junior varsity

Ripon 38, East Union 25

Leila Sanchez scored 15 points for the Indians and Tatiana Perez added eight points.

Bellah Crabb and Caliyah Lopez scored nine points each for the Lancers and Izzy Avalos chipped in five steals.