Just over a day before its game at the Martin Luther King Jr. Tribute Basketball event, the W.F. West girls basketball team found out it would not be playing its originally scheduled opponent, Mark Morris, at 6 p.m. on Monday.
Scrambling to find a game, the Greater St. Helens League’s very own Hockinson stepped up, and the Bearcats skipped no beats, beating the Hawks, 50-32.
“They’re really, really fast, are an athletic team, and shoot the ball really well,” Bearcats coach Kyle Karnofski said of Hockinson. “We played them last year in districts and we had a pretty good lead and they hit some tough shots to get back into it. We knew we had to make them adapt to us. I thought we did a good job of making them fly around and run into our defensive playmakers. I was really proud of the defensive effort tonight.”
The Bearcats (11-2, 5-1 2A EvCo) held an 11-0 lead after the first quarter, and didn’t allow a Hawks bucket until 6:27 remaining in the second quarter. Some of that, Karnofski admitted, might have been due to Hockinson’s nearly three-week layoff.
“That’s going to be a little bit of it, but we were contesting and flying around and we did a good job of knowing our assignments,” Karnofski said.
The coach praised the efforts of Drea Brumfield, for her game-high 17 points, but also praised point guard Kyla McCallum for facilitating an offense that was effective against a stout Hawks defense.
“She was great tonight getting to the rim, she just facilitates very well, she knows the offense,” Karnofski said. “She understands what her role is and she knows how to use her body and frame to get to where she needs to go. She did awesome. I really liked Lexi Roberts at the top of our zone tonight. Carlie Deskins played really well, too.”
The Bearcats will play Aberdeen on the road Tuesday in its next league contest.
