Lady Quakers Romp over Marietta, 87-51

Streck scores a game high 20 points

|Box Score|

December 17, 2005

MARIETTA - Road, sweet road. The Wilmington College Lady Quakers turned in their second straight dominant performance on the highway to dispatch of Marietta College, 87-51, in Ohio Athletic Conference play Saturday.

Undaunted and unhaunted by demons of previous visits to Marietta, the Lady Quakers opened the game by scoring 11 unanswered points - five coming from sophomore Gina Hyle (Lawrenceburg, Ind./McAuley), who made her first start at WC, in place of the injured Erica Smith (Union/Northmont).

"We got off to a great start. We've had trouble getting started here in the past," WC head coach Jerry Scheve said. "But today, like last Saturday at Heidelberg, we played very well at the start of the game."

Marietta (3-8, 0-4 OAC) pulled to within 25-19 on the strength of three-pointers from Natalie Jackson, Kristen Sallee and Sara Burns. Wilmington's Katie Streck - on her way to a game-high 20-point performance - hit a pair of treys and three layups as Wilmington (7-2, 3-1 OAC) pulled away, scoring 10 of the final 12 points to take a 44-26 halftime lead.

"After the great start, we just seemed to think that maybe it was going to be easy, and we struggled for a while," Scheve said. "But we really closed out the half well, and we came out in the second half and played very well."

For the Pioneers, things quickly went from dismal to forget about it. The Lady Quakers pounded the ball inside to Streck (Dayton/Carroll), Kelly Peters (Spencerville/Spencerville) and Kara Robinson (Zanesville/Bishop Rosecrans), whose jumper gave Wilmington a 61-31 lead at 14:06, a lead that didn't fall below 29 points the remainder of the game. While the Lady Quakers' offense was generating consistently good looks at the basket, their defense held Marietta to 36-percent shooting from the field.

"Defensively, we are slowly getting better," Scheve said. "We took them out of the things they wanted to do. Offensively, we felt we had an advantage inside and we wanted to get the ball inside. When we did, we had success. Streck was nine-for-12 from the field, Peters was six-for-11 and Robinson was three-for-six."

Jackie Hauke (Sardinia/Whiteoak), coming off a career-high 21-point performance against Heidelberg, made her presence known defensively against Marietta, holding the OAC's leading scorer Justine Pagenhardt to four points - 15 below her per-game average.

Peters joined Streck in double figures with 16 points. Hyle scored nine, Robinson and freshman Amberly Conklin (Napoleon/Napoleon) added eight each, Shawna Thomas (Middletown/Middletown) and Sam Hood (Lockbourne/Teays Valley) scored six apiece and Hauke contributed five. Kortney Reed led MC with 13 points.

Wilmington controlled the boards, picking up 20 offensive rebounds. For the game WC out-rebounded Marietta, 52-23. Hyle and Robinson led WC with seven rebounds each.

"The first half we didn't rebound very well; we didn't go to the offensive boards at all," Scheve said. "But the second half we were really going to the offensive boards hard, and when we missed shots, we put a lot of them back in."

The Lady Quakers will face Kalamazoo College Dec. 29 in first-round action of the Kalamazoo Klassic. The following day WC will face nationally ranked Hope College.