For the past 10 years, the Central Lakes College Raiders women's basketball team has fielded lineups with as few as six players which makes one statistic remarkable from a 93-44 win over Ridgewater in a non-division game Saturday, Dec. 8.
Led by Paige Wallevand's 16 points, the Raiders outscored the Warriors by a 50-2 margin in bench scoring as they improved their overall record to 4-3.
Naomi Lane added 15 points and Kelsie Weite 10 as the Raiders shot 46 percent from the field.
"In all actuality, two of our more pure scorers are coming off the bench and when you can have your starters come off and you get 16 from Paige (Wallevand) and Maggie (Fellerman) has led in two of the games in scoring, and to outscore someone that much from the bench, really speaks to the depth that we have," said CLC coach Brian Voigt. "And I told them that I trust each one of them on the court and now we just need to play our defense and that will lead to our offense."
The Raiders didn't show much energy in Friday night's loss to Minnesota West and they wanted to make sure that it was addressed before Saturday's game.
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"I think that (Friday) night we didn't bring a lot of energy and we talked about it (Friday) night and we changed a few things in our warm-up today to get them going, and I kind of put it on them," Voigt said. "They are the ones who are playing and they took charge and they came out with a lot more energy."
Lane is one of the Raiders' sophomore leaders and a presence inside on the boards and in scoring. Getting her in the scoring column early was key for the Raiders and she scored early and had nine points by halftime.
"We have had some slow starts to our games so we got together and did what we needed to do to come out strong in the first half. And we did that and had some team bonding and it went well," Lane said.
The Raiders built a 22-13 lead after the first quarter with second-chance points, and scoring from their bench as the keys.
In the second quarter, CLC outscored the Warriors 27-9, led by three-point shooting from Sam Schimpp, Lillee Hardee and Liz Anderson and led 49-22 in the first half.
With Ridgewater having just six players who saw action, CLC continued to wear the Warriors down in the second half as they won the third quarter by a 33-12 margin to take control of the game.
More stats that were pleasing to Voigt were points in the paint where CLC had a 56-16 margin and in rebounding which the Raiders won 54-31. That will serve CLC well in the Northern Division where most of its competition will have strong inside presence.
"I think in the first few games we got really comfortable with a couple of our players crashing the boards and getting all of our rebounds, and I challenged them all to outrebound the other team," Voigt said. "We crashed the boards hard and that is the mindset that we need to have, because when we play a team that is bigger we need our guards to rebound and it was nice to see a couple of our guards (Weite and Anderson) get nine and seven rebounds."
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Ridgewater 13 9 12 10 - 44
Central Lakes 22 27 33 11 - 93
RIDGEWATER
Kendra Miller 7, Kendra Kuczek 3, Taylor Rose 20, Sarah Frederick 2, Catherine Vogt 2, Morgan Gronli 10. FG 15-53 (28 percent), FT 11-19 (58 percent). 3-point 3-14 (21 percent).
CENTRAL LAKES
Katelyn Waytashek, Kezia Rahier 4, Kelsie Weite 10, Liz Anderson 7, Maggie Fellerman 7, Sam Schimpp 9, Tiffany Johnson 9, Lindsay Hendrickson 6, Paige Wallevand 16, Naomi Lane 15, Kali Mammenga 2, Lillee Hardee 8. FG 40-88 (46 percent), FT 7-11 (64 percent). 3-point 6-29 (21 percent). Overall: 4-3. Next: vs Lake Superior College at Duluth 5:30 p.m. Friday, Dec 14.
