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Connor Vanderweyst/Columbia Basin Herald - Moses Lake forward Abby Rathbun sizes up her defender against Walla Walla.
Connor Vanderweyst/Columbia Basin Herald - Moses Lake point guard Jamie Loera drives to the basket against Walla Walla.
Connor Vanderweyst/Columbia Basin Herald - Moses Lake forward Jessica Olson dribbles.
Connor Vanderweyst/Columbia Basin Herald - Moses Lake guard Taylor Stevens readies for a shot.
MOSES LAKE — Steals, blocks, deflections and turnovers highlighted Moses Lake's defensive effort against Walla Walla in the first half Saturday night.
Just two days after allowing six first-half points to Southridge, Moses Lake shut out Walla Walla in the first quarter and led 30-5 at halftime.
“We've been working on that in practice a lot,” point guard Jamie Loera said. “We do many different drills that have a lot of defense and communication with it so first half is really big for defense with us. Second half we need to probably work on that more, but we did great first half.”
Loera scored a game-high 27 points and Moses Lake (2-0) beat Walla Walla 57-29.
Jessica Olson and Abby Rathbun added 10 and eight points, respectively.
Loera started early, scoring eight of Moses Lake's 17 first-quarter points. The junior point guard canned a corner three-pointer to give the Chiefs a 10-0 lead and sunk another outside shot for a 15-0 lead.
Rathbun floated into the lane for a lay-up as time expired, punctuating a dominant eight minutes.
“Here in the first half we had really stellar defense, although we did talk at halftime about sometimes they miss opportunities so people assume it's good defense,” head coach Matt Strophy said. “We had some breakdowns that they didn't take advantage of.”
Walla Walla began to find its rhythm in the second half and capitalized on those aforementioned defensive lapses.
However, Loera countered the Blue Devils' 18 third-quarter points with 15 of her own to keep the lead at 20-plus.
“She had a fantastic game,” Strophy said. “It's nice when the other team kind of goes on that run we have somebody like Jamie that can stop it — and maybe not stop it — but keep us in it and so basketball of course the cliché is it's a game of runs and when we have people like Jamie and Abby and Jess Olson and the others we can withstand those runs from the other team.
“Hopefully we don't rest on our laurels and play even in the second half in future games like we did tonight because I think we need to play better than that, more aggressively than that.”