Coming off a hard-fought, but tough loss to Oak Hill on Tuesday, the Marion Giants responded in major way, blowing out the Muncie Central Bearcats 73-31 on Friday night at Bill Green Arena.
Marion was locked in from the start, scoring 21 first quarter points to take an early lead they would not relinquish, as the Giants easily cruised to victory.
“Against Oak Hill, we played a good 14 or 15 minutes – we didn’t 32 minutes of solid basketball,” Coach Lawrence Jordan said. “That being said, the goal was to play a 32 minute game against Muncie Central, With us having two great days of practice after the Oak Hill loss, I felt we were competitive against [the Bearcats.]”
The Giants followed that up with another big win on Saturday, going on the road and defeating the Wabash Apaches 58-30 to improve their record to 4-1 on the season.
The Giants had another excellent first quarter, outscoring the Apaches 13-2 on their way to another easy victory.
Suffocating defense, together with an aggressive offense approach, were the two key factors in the Giants’ win.
“They are very well coached, and we knew that they liked to shift defenses, so I made sure all the girls were in their proper place,” Jordan said. “I wanted to make sure that the girls did not sit back and let [Wabash] attack us with their pressure. We wanted to attack them with our man-to-man pressure and pick them apart when they tried to press us. We accomplished both things tonight. We ended up spreading them out against the press, and our man-to-man defense caused a lot of problems.”
Ellie Vermilion was on fire from the get go, pacing the Giants in the opening quarter to help them build their big lead, while the defense kept Wabash from getting anything going offensively.
“Vermilion got off to a great start,” Jordan said. “She scored nine or 10 points straight points to start the game. She knocked down two or three three-pointers to get us going, and our defense was smothering all night. Our defense triggered our offense.”
After winning just five games last season, the Giants have four wins in their first five games.
And they are only going to continue to improve.
“We are getting better and better,” Jordan said. “If teams can’t handle our pressure, it’s going to difficult for them [to compete with us].”
