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The Montcalm Community College Centurions women’s basketball team faced an almost desperate scenario in its 73-35 home loss to the Alma College Scots junior varsity team on Friday, Dec. 13. 

Centurions Head Coach Scott Pedigo made a game-time decision not to play sophomore Makenna Rautio (Big Rapids, Mich.), who suffered an ankle injury in the Centurions’ previous game. After the Centurions saw two players transfer out of the program earlier this season, this meant his team was rotating only one player off the bench for the entire game. 

Rautio has been a key player for MCC (1-6 overall), being one of the tallest players on the team but also has been leaned on to help with bringing the ball up the court and putting pressure on the opponent from the top of the key and in the paint.  

“We were rotating one person every two minutes,” Pedigo said. “Sometimes I want to get on them, but I have to remember how many minutes they’re putting in. All of them played 30-plus minutes tonight.” 

Without Rautio, Pedigo said the game strategy was to slow things down, so his players didn’t get winded quickly. Pedigo said the Centurions’ best strategy was to run the shot clock down before shooting, however, the team suffered multiple shot clock violations throughout the game, which, he said, wasn’t the intention. 

 “I think we passed up on a couple open shots but, honestly, we were trying to make it more of a possession game,” Pedigo said. “We were playing with only six (players) tonight, so it was to help try to keep our wind and keep the scoring down and give us a chance.” 

The Centurions kept things close after the first quarter, down only 15-7, however, the Scots’ lead crept up with a 7-0 run, capped off with a forceful drive to the bucket by Alma freshman guard Chelsea Overbeek to make it 22-7, Alma.  

With a couple more players to come in off the bench, Alma consistently pushed the ball up the floor and managed to get in a few fast-break points, establishing a 29-10 lead with 1:10 to go in the half.  

“It got away from us a little in the second quarter, so we took a couple timeouts there just to try and slow them down,” Pedigo said. 

Though the Scots outscored the Centurions 24-12 in the third quarter, MCC began setting up successful offensive drives towards the end of the quarter, leading to the fourth quarter, including a nice inside move by freshman forward Emma Rewa (Greenville, Mich.), who cut into the Scots defense and kissed a shot off the backboard and in, making it 53-27 early in the fourth quarter. 

“Emma Rewa did a nice job of playing in the post tonight,” Pedigo said. “That was one of their better athletes (Taelynn Hatfield) who usually averages a double-double and I think we did a nice job of giving her a hard time, though we got beat up in some other places.” 

Alma was able to double up the fourth-quarter points on a gassed MCC team, outscoring the Centurions 20-10 to finish out the game. However, despite the team’s sixth consecutive loss, Pedigo saw many positives in Friday night’s loss. 

“I think we’re starting to see where our offense cuts and moves, which we really can’t simulate in practice because the closest I can get to a five-on-five right now is three-on-three,” Pedigo said. “To run our plan and know where all the moving parts are and read the play, I think it took us about a half to figure that out.” 

With a three-week hiatus for the holiday break, Pedigo said his team will use that time to recover from injuries and try to ramp up their cardio to make up for the extra subs they won’t have for the rest of the season. 

“We got three weeks to retouch our skills, working on being better athletes and it gives us time to work on our cardio,” he said. “We will touch on little things, too, like passing and pivots, get better at screening, work on some extra post moves. I think they’re starting to gather them and now starting to use them.” 

Freshman guard Emily Putnam (Sideny, Mich.) led the Centurions with 19 points, followed by Madi Longoria (Wyoming, Mich.) with six points. 

Alma’s Hatfield led all scorers with 21 points. 

NEXT GAME: The Centurions will travel to Grand Rapids to face Grand Rapids Community College (1-3 overall) at 1 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 4.  

Media inquiries, please contact:

Shelly Springborn
Director of Communications and Public Relations
shellys@montcalm.edu
989-560-0833