EDGERTON — Friday night’s Rock Valley Conference girls’ basketball game between host Edgerton and Big Foot was a typical conference contest for the Crimson Tide.
They were dominant and proved why the rest of the conference is playing catch-up. The Crimson Tide (6-0 overall, 4-0 conference) never trailed in a 76-21 rout over the Chiefs, proving exactly why they are ranked No. 2 in Division 3 by .
Here the recipe Edgerton used:
Gracee Langer’s commanding presence
At six feet tall and being more athletic than most players on the court, you can see exactly why UW-Whitewater's women's basketball coach, Keri Carollo, recruited the senior.
Langer led all scorers with 24 points Friday. She played a large role in Edgerton's 17-0 run to start the game.
Claudia Jenny got the game’s scoring started off a pick-and-roll action with Langer. Langer then scored on consecutive possessions. Later on defense, she got a steal that led to Jenny scoring a layup to make the score 11-0. The 17-0 run concluded with Langer assisting Jenny. Also during that stretch, Eastlyn Lanham made a three-point play.
"She's huge," Edgerton coach Chris Jenny said of Langer, "especially with Brenna (Callmer) being out tonight. She's just so athletic that when teams try to play us in zone, like they were tonight, she just beats kids from spot A to spot B. And they just really can't keep her off the glass."
Suffocating defense
Edgerton's 17-0 run was halted when Leah Paulsen scored Big Foot's first basket at 12:08. Paulsen was the Chiefs' leading scorer with five points. It wouldn't be another 4 minutes, 8 seconds until the Crimson Tide let up another basket.
The Crimson Tide were active in the passing lanes, making eight steals. Marti Rebman, who scored 17 points, had four of them. Two of them came back-to-back. The first led to the senior shooting guard making a three-point play. The next led to Langer taking a trip to the free-throw line.
Big Foot scored 12 points in the first half and nine in the second.
"I thought it was good," Coach Jenny said of his team's defense. "I guess I'm greedy. I thought there were some spots where we could have been a little bit more aggressive than we were, but we were rock solid. I thought our communication was really good too."
Excellence from beyond the 3-point line
Edgerton made eight 3-pointers. Rebman, Jolia Schlag and Brooke Kahl all made two. Big Foot made three 3-pointers, and Edgerton answered twice with one of its own.
“That's one of the things this program is built on, our ability to shoot the ball and have five people on the floor who can shoot at all times. I think it just makes us very difficult. Teams have to pick a poison — are they going to try to take away our inside game, or are they going to try to pressure us up? Whichever one they choose, we've got a counter to it,” coach Jenny said.
And that's the recipe Edgerton used to forge a 55-point victory.
The Crimson Tide will use those same ingredients when they take on rival and host Evansville on Thursday, Dec. 18, at 7 p.m.
