(LAS VEGAS) In the second game of this weekend’s Las Vegas Basketball Tournament, #5 Westmont Women’s Basketball shut down #11 Great Falls (Mont.) 66-45. The next day, in their final game of the tournament, the Warriors (5-1) suffered their first loss of the season when they fell to #24 Carroll (Mont.) 76-67. Their overall tournament record was 2-1.
Head Coach Kirsten Moore reflected on their Victory against Great Falls.
“This was a really big win for us. They are a very high scoring team and our defense held them to way under their average.
“We held their all-american to 0 points which was huge. Karlie Storkson drew that assignment and denied her everywhere – she was huge for us on the defensive end and was definitely our game MVP.” Storkson held Erin Legel, who last season averaged 38.3 points a game, to 0 points.
“Offensively I thought we executed really well. There was a balance of scoring from a lot of different people and a lot of people stepped up.”
Led by Lauren McCoy, who scored the team high of 15 points, four Warriors scored double figures. Krissy Karr and Aysia Shellmire scored 12 points each, and Aimee Brakken scored ten points.
The next day the Warrior’s hopes of finishing the tournament strong were dashed by #24 Caroll (Mont.).
“We played a great first 17 minutes of the game and had a nice lead on them (30-20),” explained Moore. “We were really clicking in the first half and then made a few mistakes towards the end of the second half that allowed them to come back and cut our lead back to three by halftime (32-29). The whole second half we struggled to get any sort of momentum going.”
The game was close for the majority of the second half, until the last minute of the game when Caroll went on a nine point run to clinch the win (76-67). Before this run the score was 65-67. The run consisted of a jump-shot followed by a freethrow by Cassidy Hashley, two free-throws by Katie Estey, two free-throws by Brittney Johnson, and two more free-throws by Hashley.
“We are disappointed at a loss against a good team and we wanted to play better,” noted Moore. “This is going to fuel us to hopefully grow in some ways and continue to improve. I think that this group will take this as a challenge to get better and continue to grow towards the big goals that we have for ourselves this year.”
On Tuesday the Warriors will travel South and play the Division II Cougars of Azusa Pacific at 5:30 p.m
