Silver linings were scarce for the Gresham Community School girls basketball team throughout the first half of Thursday night’s showdown with Central Wisconsin Conference-10 power Bowler.
After that, things got worse.
The visiting Panthers maintained their hold on second place in the CWC-10 behind outstanding individual performances by Ashlynn Brisk and Reanne Kieltinski, using a big third-quarter run to knock off Gresham 53-24.
“Not a good night,” came the apt summary from Gresham coach Nick Yeager, whose club fell to 5-15 overall and 1-15 in the league. “We didn’t take care of the ball tonight. Our passing was not good, and that hurt us.”
It didn’t help that the Wildcats were taking on Bowler (15-4, 12-4 CWC-10), a team that has won seven of its last eight and holds high aspirations for the postseason.
Gresham could not stop, slow or contain the hard-driving Brisk, who dropped in 28 points and played a big hand in Bowler’s 19-6 third quarter that turned a 23-12 halftime lead into a runaway.
“We knew Gresham would fight hard,” Bowler coach A.J. Miller said. “But if we played our brand of basketball, we felt confident we could get the job done. Reanne and Ashlynn did a real nice job of setting the tempo for us.”
Kieltinski scored 17 for Bowler and was instrumental in running a fast break that proved to be Gresham’s Achilles heel.
“We’re not a really fast team,” Yeager said. “We can play with certain teams, but we need to slow it down and be a more deliberate team. We didn’t do that tonight.”
Nicole Creapeau led the Wildcats with 10 points, five rebounds and four steals, and drew praise from both coaches for hustle that persisted despite the lopsided total on the board. Sydney Jensen added eight points for Gresham.
“We did a good job of closing them out in the second half,” Miller said. “We’ve done a good job all year of closing out team when we had them down. That’s a big part of why we have a good record. We’re a good offensive team. We can play offense with anybody.”
After a nonconference game at Elcho on Monday, Bowler plays home games against first-place Menominee Indian, which is still unbeaten in the league, and then second-place Tri-County.
“We’d like to be on a good streak by then,” Miller said. “(Defending Division 5 state runnerup) Assumption is in our regional. We want to be ready for them.”
Bowler (53)
Wayka 1 0-0 2, Matsche 2 0-0 4, Brisk 10 7-14 28, Koenig 1 0-0 2, Kietlinski 7 2-3 17, Brietrok 0 0-2 0.
Gresham (24)
Jensen 3 2-2 8, Stehberger 1 0-2 2, Creapeau 3 4-6 10, Hoffman 0 0-1 0, Davids 2 0-0 4.
Bowler 14 9 19 11 — 53
Gresham 4 8 6 6 — 24
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