West High of Tracy had East Union beat on the look test.
With the imposing girth of 6-foot-2 junior center Nina Pritchett and the length of wiry 6-foot forward Heather McDonald, the Lancers and their roster of 5-foot-something runts were going to have their hands full in their season opener at Dalben Center Friday.
Well, maybe not.
While Pritchett (12 points, 10 rebounds) and McDonald (11 points, 16 rebounds, 2 blocks) got theirs in double-double efforts, it was East Union in a landslide, 61-35.
The Wolf Pack’s twin towers were able to get some easy shots off in the post, but West didn’t have an edge in rebounding with both teams coming down with 35. As it turns out, the enormous size advantage meant little to the little Lancers, whose tallest player, third-year varsity junior Shalane Jackson, stands at 5-9.
Jackson finished with 11 points, seven rebounds and three steals while fearlessly attacking Pritchett on both ends of the court despite foul trouble.
Senior standout Lexy Posz, a 5-8 wing, led the way with 16 points, six rebounds, four assists and four steals. Guard Briona Fontenot contributed 11 points.
“(The size difference) is obvious, but the coaches have prepared us for that,” Posz said. “We’re working on the fundamentals so that we don’t really need to be the tallest team (to win).
“We believe in each other, and as a team we have each other’s backs. I think that’s how we overcame their size, we just worked well together.”
Speed, depth and execution were the difference. East Union had 10 different players score while West had just four.
The Lancers easily broke through West’s full-court press in the first half and took a 31-20 advantage into the break. Posz rattled in two of her three 3-pointers back-to-back, making it 27-20, late in the second quarter to help EU make its first big charge of the game.
The game was busted wide open when reserve Audra Luckie hit two straight layups on fastbreaks midway through the fourth, punctuating a 10-0 run to start the quarter. The Lancers’ lead grew to 56-31 after Luckie’s buckets.
West (1-1), meanwhile, simply struggled to keep up with the faster, deeper Lancers. The Wolf Pack, which didn’t make a field goal over a 10-minute, 46-second stretch in the second half, was held scoreless in the fourth until McDonald’s layup with 1:04 remaining.
Shavonte Smothers later scored the rest of West’s points in the period with two free throws. The visitors were otherwise anemic at the free-throw line, where they converted just six of 24 attempts.
“If teams want to go up and down the floor we will do that and give it our best shot,” East Union coach Jim Agostini said. “Obviously they’re big, but I think we wore them out. They increasingly (got tired) as the game went along.
“We play 15 girls, and we just kept coming at them.”
