Center Point-Urbana girls’ basketball shrugs off slow start, beats Marion

MARION — Ryley Goebel can see the fear in the eyes of the opponent when it begins to bring the basketball up the floor and then notices her at the top of Center Point-Urbana’s press.

“I like to slow them down, yeah,” she smiled, after her Stormin’ Pointers overwhelmed Marion, 53-37, Tuesday night in the first game of a boy-girl basketball doubleheader. “I do watch their eyes to see where they are going to pass, yeah, so that’s how I can tell. She looks up and it’s like ‘Ope, gotta go.’”

Center Point-Urbana got going after the first quarter, turning a nine-point deficit into a five-point lead at halftime. The second half completely belonged to Class 3A’s fifth-ranked team.

Creating turnovers was behind the reversal. Marion had 24 of them.

“I thought we did a better job once we set our defense in the second quarter,” Coach Philip Klett said. “We got some easy runouts in our transition and kind of got the momentum in our favor.”

“I think we really try to focus on our defense,” said Goebel, the 6-foot senior with an equally large wingspan. “Coach says it’s all about defense. Stop, score, stop, no middle. When we focus on that, it creates things on the offensive side.”

Goebel had a game-high 18 points for CPU (5-0), hitting seven of her nine shots from the field. Tayler Reaves was the other Stormin’ Pointer in double figure-scoring with 10.

“We got a little antsy with their press, had a lot of turnovers,” Reaves said. “But we slowed it down, made the right passes and just kind of kept moving it ... We just got good shots off of it.”

As Reaves mentioned, her team also had issues of its own taking care of the basketball, committing 20 turnovers. But not only did it turn over its opponent repeatedly, it held Marion (2-3) to just 11-of-37 shooting from the field.

Sadie Stuchen had eight points in the first quarter for the Wolves but didn’t score the rest of the game. Ava Attwood and Madison Prier led Marion with 11 points each.

AT MARION

CENTER POINT-URBANA (53): Kara Katcher 3-8 0-0 7, Ryley Goebel 7-9 4-5 18, Ryanne Hansen 1-3 0-0 2, Nicole Rick 3-7 0-2 6, Tayler Reaves 4-10 0-1 10, Laine Hadsall 1-2 1-3 3, Alivia Sweeney 0-1 3-4 3, Addy Tupa 0-1 4-5 4. Totals 19-41 12-20 53.

MARION (37): Sadie Struchen 3-6 0-0 8, Ella Bockenstedt 4-6 2-3 11, Molly Dunne 0-3 0-0 0, Ava Attwood 3-7 4-7 11, Regan Rice 0-0 0-0 0, Mila Van Weelden 0-5 2-3 2, Grace Stephenson 0-3 2-2 2, Madeline Paveloka 0-0 0-0 0, Natalie McAllister 1-1 0-0 2. Totals 11-37 11-19 37.

Halftime - Center Point-Urbana 28, Marion 23. 3-point goals - Center Point-Urbana 3-14 (Katcher 1-4, Hansen 0-2, Rick 0-1, Reaves 2-5, Hadsall 0-1, Sweeney 0-1), Marion 4-11 (Struchen 2-4, Prier 1-1, Dunne 0-1, Attwood 1-4, Stephenson 0-1). Rebounds - Center Point-Urbana 29 (Goebel, Reaves 5), Marion 28 (Attwood, Van Weelden 4). Total fouls - Center Point-Urbana 16, Marion 16. Fouled out - None. Turnovers - Center Point-Urbana 20, Marion 24.

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