Kirtland’s aggressive start led to a dominating 60-20 win over visiting Richmond Heights on Saturday.
The Hornets outscored the Spartans 24-0 in the first quarter and led 33-1 at halftime in pushing their record to 13-0 overall and 7-0 in the Chagrin Valley Conference Valley Division.
“We wanted to come with a lot of energy to start the game off, which helped us all around,” said senior Sydney Snyder, who led all scorers with 22 points. “We were able to get steals on defense and great looks on offense. We also got the chance to work on things that we normally don’t get to in games, which helped us a lot as a team.”
Jenna Sayle contributed 17 points to the win and Amber Yurick finished with eight. Lauren Snyder and Julia Camino both pitched in with four points, Katie McCollister scored three and Lauren Lutz added a bucket.
“I think a lot of our offense has to do with how good our defense is because we’re a quick team that loves to press and we get a lot of points off of the fast breaks,” said McCollister, the team’s point guard. “I did my best to speed the game up on them and had a lot of opportunities to throw the ball down the court for a quick layup.”
Kirtland also dominated on the glass, pulling down 47 rebounds to just 16 for Richmond Heights.
Lutz posted a game-high 17 rebounds.
The 33-1 halftime score allowed the Hornets the opportunity to game test some new offensive looks.
“We got to work on our offense and we worked on being patient, which in the end helped a lot of us score today,” Sydney Snyder said. “We want as many people possible to be able to score whenever needed, because the more scorers we have the harder it is to defend us which will only help us later in the season.”
The Hornets open the second half of the conference season on Wednesday at Berkshire.
“The undefeated streak gives us a ton of confidence and just makes us want to go out there and play as hard as we can to keep it,” McCollister said. “Coach (Bob) Bell actually just told us that he believes this is the first girls team at Kirtland that has gone this many games without (a loss) and that was a really big accomplishment for us, but at the same time we don’t like to focus on it too much because we don’t want that to be the main concern when going into games. As long as we go out and play as hard as we can like we have been we’ll be happy with our record.”
Kirtland 60, Richmond Heights 20
Richmond Heights: Henden 10, Love 2, Foy 3, Smith 4, Bartley 1
Kirtland (13-0, 7-0 CVC): McCollister 3, L. Snyder, S. Snyder 22, Sayle 17, Lutz 2, Camino 4, Yurick 8
Richmond Hts. 0 1 5 14 — 20
Kirtland 24 9 11 16 — 60
Free throws: Richmond Heights 5 of 8, Kirtland 2 of 6; 3-pointers: Richmond Heights 3 (Henden, Foye, Smith), Kirtland 2 (S. Snyder 2); Rebounds: Richmond Heights 16, Kirtland 47 (Lutz 17); Assists: Richmond Heights 3, Kirtland 25 (L. Snyder 7)
