By Susan Harman

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – West High won its regional semifinal girls basketball game and won it convincingly as it was supposed to do to start off the postseason.

The third-ranked Women of Troy forced a multitude of turnovers and turned them into points in a 73-37 rout of unranked Ottumwa Saturday night at West. The Trojans (19-3) will play host to No. 13 Southeast Polk (14-8) Tuesday night for a berth in the girls state tournament. The Rams have made six consecutive trips to the state tournament. West’s last appearance was in 2015.

“I know we’re still not where we want to be, so we’re just going to try to keep improving in practice and in games,” junior Logan Cook said.

Ottumwa ended its season at 14-9.

West led from the beginning, and the first quarter provided all the evidence needed to see how this game would go. The Women of Troy forced 13 first-quarter turnovers by the Bulldogs.           

“We’re usually a pretty defensively oriented team,” junior Rachael Saunders said. “That’s been our focus this week in practice because we know they have some pretty good outside shooters  and drivers , so shutting down their main players was kind of our focus.”

It wasn’t necessarily West’s full-court press that did the damage.

 “A lot of us did a good job getting steals,” Cook said. “We were trying to use our length to get into their lanes as fast as possible and hopefully get fast breaks as a result.”

The Bulldogs had trouble completing a pass in the first quarter, as West overplayed the passing lanes and swarmed the ball. The Women of Troy led 23-7 after one quarter.

“We really wanted to put them away right away,” junior Paige Beckner said.

“We got out and ran; I thought we guarded pretty well,” West coach B.J. Mayer said. “Their two leading scorers, (Kacy) Nickerson and (Jada) Schrage, I don’ t think they got many open looks.”

Cook led all scorers with 18 points, and Saunders had 17.

West got nice contributions off the bench with Beckner scoring 14 and sophomore guard Cailyn Morgan 10. Beckner made 4-of-5 shots, including 3-of-4 3-pointers and made all three of her free throws. The only shot she missed was a long heave when West inbounded the ball with just .7 seconds left in the third quarter.

 “I just want to help out our team as much as I can,” Beckner said. “We have such a good team when we play together.”

 “The really neat thing for us is we’ve had seven different players score 15 in a game,” Mayer said. “And she’s not one of them, and she had 14 tonight. That just shows our balance and how much we’ll play as a team.”

Ottumwa        7   15   9   6 –  37

West High      23 20  17 13 – 73

Ottumwa (37) – Lily Anderson 0-2 0-1 0, Morgan Greiner 3-4 1-2 7, Kacy Nickerson 0-4 2-2 2, Jaylin Carter 4-8 3-6 11, Jada Schrage 2-6 0-0 5, Kaylee Bix 2-4 0-0 4, Ellen Carlson 2-3 4-4 8, Janielle Cobler 0-3 0-0 0, Jillian Heaton 0-2 0-0 0, Holly Leffler 0-0 0-0 0, Katie Nelson 0-0 0-0 0, Helen Altfillisch 0-0 0-0 0, Carollin Mellin 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 13-36 10-15.

West High (73) – Lauren Zacharias 1-4 2-2 5, Rachael Saunders 8-12 0-1 17, Maddie Huinker 1-5 0-0 2, Logan Cook 8-17 2-3 18, Emma Koch 0-2 0-0 0, Cailyn Morgan 3-9 3-5 10, Paige Beckner 4-5 3-3 14, Katie McGrane 1-4 1-2 4, Carrie Callahan 1-2 1-2 3, Sydney Allen 0-1 0-0 0, Isabel Smith 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 27-61 12-18.

3-point goals – Ottumwa 1-7 (Nickerson 0-1, Schrage 1-5, Cobler 0-1), West 7-20 (Zacharias 1-1, Saunders 1-3, Huinker 0-3, Cook 0-2, Morgan 1-3, Beckner 3-4, McGrane 1-3, Callahan 0-1). Total fouls: Ottumwa 13, West 14. Fouled out – None.