MEDINA — The North Ridgeville girls basketball team went on the road Nov. 27 and walked straight into a buzzsaw.
All indications were that it could be a good early season matchup between the 1-0 Rangers and 2-0 Medina, but such notions ended quickly. The Bees hit six of eight 3-pointers in the first quarter and burst their way out to a 26-11 lead, eventually taking a 75-44 decision in the non-conference encounter.
Or, as Medina coach Karen Kase put it, “We did a lot of things right tonight.”
From junior forward Olivia Klanac scoring a career-high 36 points including five 3-pointers to the Bees hitting nine 3-pointers and 16 of 17 free throws as a team, Medina put on a show.
“Medina just played lights-out tonight,” said North Ridgeville coach Amy Esser. “They couldn’t miss, they got all the 50-50 balls, they got all the boards, and we came out flat. They played exactly how we expected. We just couldn’t match their physicality.”
The Rangers countered with a high-scoring player of their own, as Grace Kingery put up 31 points. However, she had to work extremely hard for every one of them against a physical Medina defense, hitting just 8 of 24 shots, including 4 of 12 from beyond the arc. The 6-foot-1 senior who is headed to Ball State next year also had 13 rebounds and three blocks. However, the rest of the team combined for only 13 points on the night.
“We’re going to need other people to step up; other people to move, other people to score,” Esser said. “We have those scorers and those players. They’re just going to have to play more of a heightened role.”
The task of countering teams that focus on shutting down Kingery became even tougher after freshman point guard Brooke Schroeder went down in the second quarter with what is feared to be a serious knee injury and could be lost for the season. Junior Gabby Thibodeaux also will be out for an extended period while she deals with an arm injury that is expected to put her out of commission for six weeks.
“It’s just next man up mentality,” Esser said. “We have pieces and parts, and we have to keep putting it together. But now we have two pieces missing, so now we have to find two more parts.”
Kingery hit two 3-pointers in the game’s opening 2:08, giving the Rangers an early 7-3 lead. However, that’s when things took a turn for the worse. Medina employed full-court pressure, forcing Ridgeville into six turnovers in the opening period, and Klanac, Abby Dress and Izzy Kurka all hit 3-pointers as the Bees went on a 23-4 run.
“We didn’t execute the game plan,” Esser said. “We didn’t execute the things we worked on. They hit a couple shots, we got a couple turnovers, and we didn’t get tough. We didn’t play tough. We’ve been talking about playing tough and playing physical, but that’s why we play teams like Medina, to get us prepared.”
When Schroeder left the game, North Ridgeville was behind, 29-14. Watching their teammate writhing on the floor in pain made a bad situation even worse for the Rangers.
“I think our kids got hit hard when that happened, and they didn’t know how to recover from that,” Esser said.
Eventually, the margin got as high as 31 points, early in the fourth quarter and also at the game’s end.
The next game for both teams is against Brunswick, as Medina hosts the Blue Devils on Nov. 29 and the Rangers do the same on Dec. 1.
