HUGHESVILLE — The Northwest girls basketball team battled injuries and foul trouble in a losing effort, falling 38-30 to Slater on Friday in the season opener.
The Lady Mustangs were withing three early in the fourth quarter, trailing 32-29 after Megan Simpson hit a pair of free throws, but with turnovers on the next four possessions, Northwest scored just one point the rest of the way and Slater got a basket inside from Phelecia Knob and a 3-pointer from Breanna Wright and was able to keep the Lady Mustangs from making up any more ground.
Slater used a full-court press for much of the game and Northwest struggled with it at times, turning the ball over 27 times.
“Their pressure all night, they stayed on us,” said Northwest coach Darrin Walk. “We had a couple of turnovers and that usually doesn’t do very well when you’re trying to get into an offense.”
Starting point guard Megan Walk went down with a shoulder injury in the third quarter after scoring eight points. Simpson was also briefly out but returned to finish with eight. Simpson and two other Northwest players had four fouls.
“At this point in the season we really don’t have a rotation yet,” Darrin Walk said. “We had some girls get hurt (Friday) but one of them (Simpson) will be fine. She had an injury to her nose.”
Both teams spent a lot of time on the free throw line. Northwest scored 20 of its 30 points off of free throws. The two teams shot a combined 60 free throws in the game.
“They played hard defense and we tried to play hard defense back,” Darrin Walk said. “They had a few more players than we did otherwise we probably could have played harder yet. When you get in foul trouble, it’s hard to play man-to-man defense so we didn’t really get into that.”