‘WIN’ CHILL: Playing on frigid night, Northville’s ‘D’ ices Plymouth, 39-22
Northville junior Harper Lee was fouled on this first-quarter baseline drive.
Facing a significantly taller opponent — although, aren’t all of the modestly-sized Northville girls basketball team’s foes significantly taller? — the feisty Mustangs bolted to an 11-0 first-quarter lead Tuesday night and never looked back throughout a 39-22 victory over fellow KLAA West contender Plymouth.
Heading into Friday night’s home game against winless Novi, the 5-1 Mustangs are tied atop the division standings with Hartland, which doubled-up Canton Tuesday, 50-25.
Plymouth will take a 4-2 division record into Friday’s 5:30 p.m. game against PCEP rival Salem.
When they weren’t executing pedal-to-the-metal fast-breaks, Northville’s offense swung the ball around the perimeter with surgical precision until their patience resulted in a decent look at the hoop.
(To check out video highlights of Tuesday’s game, click here.)
In the swing of things
More often than not, it appeared as if every Mustang on the court touched the ball on the non-fast-break possessions — a trait that goes hand-in-hand with the team’s other game-winning tradition: sticky defense.
“Offensively, our biggest strength is our ball movement,” noted Mustang senior Lyza Koski, one of just three seniors on the Northville roster. “But I think it’s our defense that gives us momentum. When we get big stops and steals on defense — combined with our rebounding — is what gets us going.”
Neither team had school Tuesday due to temperatures in the single digits, but the far-from-routine game-day routine didn’t seem to faze the host Mustangs.
“This happened a few times last year where we didn’t have school then played a game,” Koski said, “plus we’ve had a few Saturday games, so it’s not a big deal for us. We found out (Tuesday) morning during a shoot-around that we’d be playing tonight, which was exciting.”
Balanced attack
Northville was paced offensively by sophomore Peyton Sivier, who scored 11 points. Junior guard Carly Pelon added nine points and Harper Lee netted the game’s first five points before finishing with six.
Koski tallied four points and an all-important team-high 12 rebounds.
“Plymouth is a tough match-up for us because they have two tall, skilled post players (junior Annie Flavin and senior Izzy Krause) and our tallest player is probably Peyton Sivier, who is 5-7 or 5-8 on a good day,” said Northville Head Coach Shaun Dicken. “But our girls played together and executed our game plan throughout the game.
Going to work
“We’re in a position every game when we have to play hard to offset our height disadvantage. Everyone worked hard tonight, including the players who came off the bench. They were diving on the court for loose balls and boxing out for rebounds. We don’t have a ton of size inside, so we haven’t to swing the ball on our offensive sets as fast as we can so that we can decent looks at the basket.”
Plymouth, which avoided a scoreless first quarter thanks to Eva Krstich’s three-point make with 18 seconds left in the opening stanza, consistently worked the ball around for good shots, but had a hard time getting its bunnies to fall through net.
Northville led 21-8 at halftime before stretching its lead to 32-14 with eight minutes to play.
“Plymouth has a very good team, so, honestly, I thought this was a game that would probably go down to the buzzer,” Koski concluded. “But we did a lot of little things that led to a big win.”
Family members face each other
A cool sub-story to Tuesday’s game was its family connection. Northville Head Coach Shaun Dicken is the uncle of Plymouth junior point guard Mackenzie Dicken, which led to the unleashing of huge smiles from both Dickens when they shared a fist bump during pre-game introductions.
Chad Dicken, Mackenzie’s dad and Shaun’s brother, is an assistant coach for Northville, but he doesn’t coach on game days so he can watch his daughter play.
Dicken shared scoring honors with Flavin as both Wildcats poured in six points a piece.
Dicken was forced to sit out the final 2 minutes and 50 seconds of the second half after she committed her third foul.
Ed Wright can be reached at 734-664-4657 or edwright@socialhousenews.com.
