The Hopkins, Martin and Wayland girls’ basketball teams are the only high school squads with winning, or close to winning records this winter.
Wayland girls entered Friday’s contest with a 9-8 overall mark, 6-5 in the O-K Gold Conference, and managed to climb to two games above the 50-50 mark by defeating Cedar Springs 55-46. The Lady Wildcats now are 10-8 overall and 7-5 in the O-K Gold Conference.
The Wildcat boys, however, went down to defeat later in the evening on the Red Hawks’ floor.
The Hopkins girls lifted their overall season record to 8-10 Friday evening by pasting Wyoming Godwin Heights 70-48 in easily their best offensive effort of the season. The Lady Vikings also improved to 6-6 in the O-K Silver Conference standings, where they’re in a dogfight for fourth place with Comstock Park.
The Hopkins boys, however, absorbed a 73-42 drubbing at the hands of the Wolverines, watching their overall record fall to 4-12.
Martin girls fell two games below the .500 mark for the first time this season Friday with a 49-36 defeat at Watervliet. The Lady Clippers have fallen on hard times since their 5-1 start because of injuries and illnesses, and now are 8-10.
Watervliet, with the triumph, won the Southwestern Athletic Conference Lakshore Division championship and it owns an overall record of 15-1.
“Before the game, I gave the girls a reminder of how this similar matchup played out last season,” said Lady Clippers’ coach Ben Schipper. “Last year’s regular season finale brought a 14-1 Watervliet team to Martin when we were 6-5. We beat them by 2 in OT and that propelled us for our tournament run. This year, they were 15-1 and beat us 48-22 in our first matchup. We were 8-9. We said this is no different than last year.
“We feel we’re better than what our record shows and that we could compete with them. We wanted the girls to play with that confidence.”
The coach said Martin dug itself a hole, down 18-11 at the end of the first quarter, but battled back to be down only by one, 24-23 at half and was up 36-35 with 4:30 to go in the game.
“Unfortunately, we had a rough stretch of several possessions in a row in the final four minutes where we lost our discipline and it led to either poor shots or turnovers that Watervliet capitalized on,” Schipper said.
“They are a talented team who play very well together and bring back the majority of their team next year.”
The coach continued, “We’re very proud of the way we fought. We switched to a 2-3 zone in the second quarter that proved very effective to limiting (star player) Dietz inside scoring. Looking back on it, we should have done that from the tip.
Makala Goddard and Gracie Shettler scored 16 and 12 points. respectively, to lead the Lady Clippers, with both sinking a couple of three-pointer bombs.
“Makala and Gracie played long minutes after both missing practice due to sickness this week,” Schipper added. “They gutted it out and gave us good aggressiveness on offense. Maddy Bogdan also played heavy minutes and did a lot of great things last night on both sides of the floor. It was a good team effort and we hope this fuels our fire going into the last week of the regular season.”
Martin boys dropped a 64-36 decision to Watervliet, which improved its record to 14-2 overall.