SHELBY — Not many teams can match Shelby’s strength, length and athleticism, but Ludington showed in Monday’s West Michigan Conference cross-divisional game that it certainly can.
The visiting Orioles harassed Shelby into a poor shooting performance and 29 turnovers Monday night, handing the Tigers their first loss of the season, 44-30.
Despite those giveaways and an 18% shooting percentage, Shelby (9-1) was able to stay within shouting distance of the Orioles most of the game and trailed by only eight points until an and-one basket by Madelyn Kenyon early in the fourth quarter made it 39-29. Neither team scored for some time after that, and Shelby didn’t make any more field goals in the game.
“Their pressure definitely bothered our guards,” Shelby coach Sarah Wolting said. “It just felt like nothing was going our way. A loose ball would go on their end. In the first half they were making everything. We knew coming in, after scrimmaging them in the summer, that they like to make that chaos, and they did a good job of it. Our subs on the bench, our guards, everyone’s just got to be stronger.”
It didn’t help that Michelle Peterson has been battling illness lately, nor that leading scorer Jayna Burmeister, who’s been playing through a facial injury, had a new mask she had to play with Monday. Wolting said she could tell by the way Burmeister occasionally looked down at the ball while dribbling that she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the mask. Though the sophomore star still had a team-best 12 points, they came on 5-of-24 shooting.
Some of that, too, had to be credited to the Orioles’ swarming, attacking, physical defense. Shelby simply could not get into offensive sets at times as Ludington relentlessly got in the face of the Tigers.
“Their height and their physicality pushed us a little bit,” Wolting said. “It was actually kind of nice that the refs let some things go, so we had to play tougher.”
Shelby had early answers for Ludington, rallying from an early 9-2 deficit to tie it up at 11 late in the quarter, but a floater by Kenyon in the final seconds of the first quarter gave the O’s a boost heading into the second, which they turned into nine points in the first two minutes of the quarter. At that point it was 22-13, and while the Tigers continued to scrap and fight - they had a 52-32 edge in rebounding, 24 of those 52 on the offensive glass - they were never able to get much closer than that.
“We’ve got to be better at putbacks,” Wolting said. “We’ve got to be better on the outside. We’ve got to be stronger with the ball. Hats off to Ludington. They did pressure us. They were ready to play tonight.”
Those strong rebounding numbers at least created a silver lining for Shelby to take from the defeat. Another, Wolting said, is the pressure of holding an undefeated record won’t be there in future games - very few of which will feature a team capable of coming at Shelby for 32 minutes the way Ludington did.
Of course, such matchups are possible in the postseason, and with the Tigers holding high hopes of a deep run, games like Monday’s help in exposing them to what it will take to win at that level.
“I think this will help us in the long run,” Wolting said. “We’re going to learn from it. We’re going to get better from it.”
Burmeister had 19 rebounds for the Tigers in the defeat, with Annabelle Stark grabbing 13 and Kylie Brown 10. Eloise Kwietnewski led all scorers with 14 points for Ludington.
