Demons’ defense downs 1A No. 3 Sigourney

SIGOURNEY - A coach knows he has a good team when they're worried about the end result and not worried about who scores what.

Washington head coach Shannon Rugg saw that in his Demons Monday when they took down the Class 1A No. 3-ranked Sigourney Savages, 49-38, in a nonconference girls basketball game.

In fact, the biggest stat of the night could have been by Halle Leyden and it wasn't her point total for Washington, although she did finish with 12 points on three twos, a three and 3 of 4 free throws.

After pulling away from a 21-18 halftime lead for 32-26 lead toward the end of the third quarter, Leyden drew a charge that led to an Anna Nacos score, then drew another charge that led to Madison Fishback scoring on an assist from Addison Six.

'You don't get charges called very often anymore in a high school basketball game,” Rugg said. 'It was pretty gutsy of Halle to stand in there.” Suddenly a Savage comeback was thwarted and Washington led by 10 to start the fourth quarter, which quickly turned into 1 15-point advantage after Fishback canned a trey then grabbed an offensive rebound and fed it to Six for a 41-26 lead. 'Sometimes you just have to feel it and I guess I was,” Fishback said. 'Last year, they beat us twice (by a combined total of three points) and they wanted to play us this year, so it was a push for us to win it and take them down in the ground. This shows us that were capable of much more than we think. We can do whatever we need to do when we want to do it.”

It was a 12-9 Demon lead after the first quarter.

'I thought they outworked us from the beginning,” Sigourney head coach Zach Tremmel said. 'They forced us into a lot of tough shots. We need to find more options when we're trying to score.”

Kaylee Weber (16) and Megan Stuhr (14) had 30 of the Savages' point total. Stuhr averages 21.8. Weber averages 15.2.

'It always helps the team when they step up and play a bigger school,” Tremmel said. 'They exposed a lot of things that we need to work on. It is not the end of the world for us because we will learn from it and hopefully it'll make us better in the long run.”

The team concept is definitely going to make the Demons better.

Six finished with 13 points. Kellie Dallmeyer had seven and Kinsey Duwa six. Fishback finished with five, Nacos four and Olivia Pacha two.

'I told Coach (Jake) Steen before we left that I wanted to get Fish more playing time,” Rugg said. 'Against Burlington (Friday), I could see the game was slowing down for her. We need her to come off the bench and give us some important minutes. My thinking coming here was to give her more playing time and she responded. She did some good things for us. She works hard and can do a lot of things for us.”

Everyone on the Demons displayed versatility in their game and that will be important going forward as Washington returns to Class 4A play Friday at Mt. Pleasant.

'Addison just played awesome the whole first half,” Rugg said. 'Olivia is learning to play with fouls. This group is starting to figure it out. They don't care who scores.”

The defense made a huge difference, holding Sigourney without a point for the first half of the third quarter and for the first 3 minutes, 12 seconds of the fourth. Even though Pacha picked up her third foul just 59 seconds into the second half.

'Our defense was outstanding,” Rugg said. 'It look like we are playing a zone but we were playing man. We know they had a girl average 20 and one averaging 15 and we just had to know where they were. In the second half, we really clogged up the lane on them and gave them some fits. We are really starting to understand what we want to do offensively and defensively. I like where we are going.”

Sigourney lost for the first time this year in six games and hosts Keota today. The Demons improve to 4-2.