Edmonds-Woodway girls take down Meadowdale

Published 8:22 pm Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Edmonds-Woodway coach Duane Hodges freely admits he likes the Kasper family.

It’s easy to see why.

Freshman forward Natalie Kasper scored a team-high 16 points and senior Madeline Kasper, her older sister, added 14 to lead the Warriors to a 60-44 victory over Meadowdale in a nonconference girls basketball game, Dec. 10 at Meadowdale High School.

“It was easily our best game of the year so far,” Hodges said.

The Kasper sisters each made four 3-pointers and their team (2-2 overall) sank 10 overall.

“We came out strong at the beginning, got an early lead,” Hodges said. “We shot the ball with confidence.”

When the Warriors centers got into foul trouble, Hodges turned to his reserves.

“We got great help off the bench,” he said.

Edmonds-Woodway opened the game with a 10-point run, thanks to a couple of big 3-pointers, and continued to hit from beyond the arc the entire game. The Warriors were able to pass around the zone defense that Meadowdale presented.

“I thought they did a great job of making the extra pass and knocking down threes,” Meadowdale head coach Troy Parker said. “They had six threes in the first half and they really kind of picked our zone apart.”

The Mavericks tried to battle back, coming within three points of the Warriors in the second quarter, but every time the score got closer, E-W would pull away.

“Their ability to make big shots any time we got close to threatening really crippled our ability to get back in the game,” Parker said.

Edmonds-Woodway’s Sidney Eck scored nine points and Samone Jackson and Seyi Olajoyegbe each contributed seven points.

“We have a good, balanced offense,” Hodges said. “It was our third different leading scorer this year.”

The young Warriors (Madeline Kasper is the lone senior) are continuing to make strides.

“We’re playing with a little more confidence. We’re not playing quite as scared,” Hodges said. “We’re learning how to think more on the court.”

Parker sees Kasper as a strong leader.

“Madeline Kasper does such a nice job for them of controlling (the) tempo,” Parker said. “Full credit to them. They really came out and were ready to play, and then they made shots.”

Margreet Barhoum had a game-high 20 points to lead the Mavericks, who fell to 0-3 overall on the season. Parker thinks that once Meadowdale can find another consistent scorer to complement Barhoum, it will be able to get its season back on track.

“I think we’ve learned an awful lot about ourselves in an 0-3 start,” Parker said, “and I think eventually we’ll bounce back and be fine.”

Herald staff contributed to this story.