CUMBERLAND — Bishop Walsh hung around for a quarter, but Northern outscored the Spartans 19-5 in the second, pulling away to win 59-23 on Wednesday.
“I thought BW came out with a lot of energy,” Northern head coach Dave Yoder said. “Those girls play hard, they play as hard as they can. We started a little sluggish, once we switched to man-to-man we created some turnovers and got some easier shots.”
The Huskies (8-8) opened the game on a 10-2 run, but the Spartans (5-8) answered with an 8-2 run to cut the deficit to 12-10 heading into the second.
Northern opened the second quarter on a 13-3 run, holding Bishop Walsh about four minutes in between scores.
“Just looking for five on the floor that had a little more defensive intensity and then staying with that group of five for a while,” Yoder said of what changed. “I don’t even know which players it was, but finding the five and holding them on the floor for six or seven minutes.”
The Huskies forced 11 turnovers in the quarter while committing two.
Northern led 31-15 at halftime after holding the Spartans to 6 of 18 (33%) shooting including 2 of 11 (18%) from deep.
“No heart, we practice, but they don’t translate it onto the game floor,” Bishop Walsh head coach Shane Scott said. “It’s tough, first year coming in not knowing what you have. It’s tough, but at the same time, I still gotta coach and gotta put them in the right situations.”
The Huskies shot 11 of 29 (38%) from the field and 3 of 14 (22%) from beyond the arc, missing several open looks in the corner.
Northern outscored Bishop Walsh 15-3 in the third quarter and led 46-18 heading to the fourth.
“Super game plan, I knew all they wanna do is shoot 3s,” Scott said. “So I stacked the perimeter and made them beat us down, beat us inside the perimeter. We did it, we were down two early second quarter and then down 16 at half. They just stopped trusting. That’s why we got in foul trouble because they’re out of position.”
The Huskies’ Abby Nelson led all scorers with 14 points, adding two steals while Kaylee Bowser finished with 12 points and four steals.
Rachel Wharton led the Spartans with 10 points with a pair of triples.
Scott is also an assistant for Tommie Reams on the Allegany College men’s team and took the reigns of the Bishop Walsh girl’s team this season.
“The big difference from AC boys and high school girls is games are fast, girls have to rely on fundamentals,” Scott said. “Boys can adapt and make things happen. Girls are so perfection about things, they wanna do everything, make everything right and everything’s gotta be perfect.”
Northern heads to East Hardy (6-6) on Monday at 7 p.m.
Bishop Walsh hosts Berkeley Springs on Thursday followed by Hyndman on Monday at 5 p.m.