By Greg Gielczyk
LocalSportsJournal.com
MANISTEE — Shelby’s girls basketball team is in a rough spot right now with its starting point guard out and the Tigers are struggling to find someone to fill that position.
Post players are helping to bring the ball up the floor, which isn’t the ideal situation for a team that likes to run as much as possible. And it showed Wednesday night.
After settling into a 16-16 tie at the half, the Tigers sputtered in the second half and wound up losing to Manistee Catholic Central, 42-26, in non-conference action on the road.
The Tigers were coming off a loss to Hart on Tuesday night and might well have been feeling a little drained after working so hard in the first half.
“I thought we played pretty good the first half,” Shelby coach Sarah Wolting said. “We changed our defense. We don’t normally play man-to-man, and we decided to play some man-to-man just because I felt we matched up pretty good against them. We knew that we needed to pressure a little bit and get to the big girls. We’re in a rough place right now.”
Shelby had a good start, taking an early 4-2 lead before finishing with an 8-7 edge at the end of the first quarter. The Tigers stretched their advantage to three, 10-7, to open the second quarter and led, 16-14 late in the half on a basket by Brylee Friedman. But the Sabers scored at the buzzer for a 16-16 tie.
Manistee Catholic then rattled off an 8-0 run in the third quarter to mount an eight-point advantage, 24-16 with 3:49 remaining.
Shelby had the answer, however, as Aubrey Klotz scored five unanswered points to shave the deficit to three, 24-21, with 2:53 to play in the quarter.
That was the Tigers’ last hurrah, though, as the Sabers owned the rest of the game.
“We have to work on executing our offense and getting open shots,” Wolting said. “I thought Aubrey Klotz worked very hard tonight to bring the ball up. Really, she doesn’t play point guard. She’s more of a wing and makes the passes. I was impressed with how hard she worked tonight and wanted the ball.
“The girls looked a little bit slow tonight after playing Hart last night. But that’s the way it goes.”
Klotz finished with a game-high 14 points to lead the Tigers. Kendall Zaverl added five.
Shelby has lost three consecutive games to fall to 6-8 on the season and will host Ravenna in the West Michigan Conference Rivers Division on Friday.