ST. GEORGE - With a dominating center like Morgan Wood, Beaver has aspirations of capturing the 2A girls basketball championship this season.
Yet titles aren't won through the efforts of one player alone. Teams have to figure ways to prevail when their bread and butter isn't working for them.
That's why the Beavers 55-32 victory over Pine View on Tuesday night seemed so promising. After Wood picked up her second foul in the waning seconds of the first quarter, she was kept out of the game until the third stanza. Then all Beaver did was extend its lead from 21-7 to 30-9 at the break.
"We can dominate from the outside just as well as the inside," said Wood, who led all players with 21 points. "Our guards really took it to them. Teams think they're going to pack it inside on us, but our guards are going to make them pay."
Kelsey Blackner (10 points), Shaleece Christensen (seven points) and Brittany Griffiths hit 3-pointers for the Beavers. Defensively, however, was where the visitors made their mark.
Beaver (1-1) held Pine View (0-1) to two points in the second quarter and a scoreless span of nearly eight minutes.
"I thought our defense when Morgan was out was really big," Beavers coach Jon Marshall said. "Morgan is a great player, but there are going to be times when we're going to have to win without her. Our girls did a good job of stepping up. We have to have that balance."
Even when the focus was on Wood, the 6-foot-2, SUU-bound center dominated. In the first quarter she scored 10 points, including a pair putbacks. She followed with nine in the second quarter to boost the lead to 44-17 - the largest of the game - over the 4A Panthers.
"She's just so hard to guard one on one," Marshall said. "We did a good job getting the ball to her."
