Early 3-point barrage carries Ottawa girls past visiting Princeton

OTTAWA — Combined, there were only eight made field goals during the entire first half of Friday evening’s meeting of old North Central Illinois Conference rivals Princeton and the host Ottawa Lady Pirates.

That five of those eight were first-quarter Ottawa 3-pointers proved to be an anomaly — and a decisive one — in an otherwise defense-dominated, 37-18 Lady Pirates victory over their visitors from Princeton.

“[Ottawa] coming out of the gate and hitting 3s like that was tough to recover from.”

—  Princeton girls basketball coach Tiffany Gonigam

“That was really, really impressive,” Princeton coach Tiffany Gonigam said of the Lady Pirates’ first-quarter barrage from behind the arc. “They had a great shooting night. We were in the low 30s [in shooting percentage], and honestly, that was a good night for us too. ...

“But [Ottawa] coming out of the gate and hitting 3s like that was tough to recover from.”

The Lady Tigers fall to 2-2 on the season heading into a scheduled but still uncertain-due-to-quarantine Monday visit to Hall.

Ottawa’s second win in as many nights takes the Lady Pirates to 4-2 heading into a scheduled Monday visit to Maple Park to take on Kaneland.

After the Lady Tigers turned the ball over on the game-opening inbounds pass, it took Ottawa just 37 seconds to strike with the first of its five game-changing 3-pointers in the opening quarter. Gabi Krueger found an open Maddie Carroll for the trey, and after a Taylor Quiram bucket the Lady Pirates answered with two Brooke Waddell 3s, an Ella Marvel 3-pointer, another from Waddell, then capped it off with a Gabi Krueger free throw to carry a 16-2 advantage into the second period.

“We came out guns-a-blazin’, and that gave us that pad we needed.”

—  Ottawa girls basketball coach Brent Moore

“That’s one thing Coach [Joe] Frye talked about in pregame — we had to get off to a good start,” said Lady Pirates coach Brent Moore. “We didn’t get off to a good start last night when L-P came over here, and our backs were against the wall from the very beginning.

“And we did tonight. We came out guns a-blazin’, and that gave us that pad we needed.”

Quiram hit a 3 of her own for Princeton in the second, with each team managing just three points to make it 19-5 at the halftime break. The offenses warmed up slightly in the second half, but the Lady Pirates’ lead was never threatened by their former foes in the NCIC.

“I thought our girls played with a lot of effort,” said Gonigam, “and they thought it was fun to play in an atmosphere like this. We don’t usually play at a school as big as Ottawa, and the pace was much quicker than we’re used to, but we really liked that challenge. ...

“We kind of made a leap to come here in terms of competition, but if you ask the kids, they’ll say it was the most fun game they’ve had.”

Quiram with seven points and five rebounds led Princeton in both categories. Olivia Gartin added three points and two steals, Mckenzie Hecht tallied two steals, and Savanna Birkey handed out two assists.

Waddell added two more 3s to her first-quarter trio to finish with a game-high 15 points. Maddie Carroll pitched in seven points, Ella Marvel combined four points with five rebounds, two assists and two steals, and sophomore sparkplug Grace Carroll came off the bench to provide three points, four assists, four rebounds and three steals.

“She’s that first off then bench that brings that energy and that special dynamic that teams look for in a sixth-man right now. Grace had a really good week ...” Moore said. “This is not a surprise, because Grace Carroll works her butt off in practice.”