Warhawks grow from adversity
Team has won four of five games after losing point guard to knee injury
Germantown — By learning to adapt in the face of the adversity, all of the goals that the Germantown girls basketball team had before starting point guard Melissa Klemm injured her knee close to three weeks ago, are still in place.
The Warhawks took two more steps toward achieving them by overpowering Whitefish Bay, 61-46, on Feb. 2, and then by holding Milwaukee Lutheran at arm's length, 65-56, on Friday.
With the two wins, the Warhawks remained in second in the North Shore Conference at 8-2 and improved to 13-3 overall. They now have four wins in five games since Klemm went down.
"I think we've shown a lot of character and mental toughness," said Germantown coach Matt Stuve. "It wasn't just Melissa. We also lost (guard) Kristen Bartel the first week of the season and we've had others miss games to down the stretch here."
The Warhawks still trail third-ranked in state Nicolet (10-0, 15-1) in league play and will get a chance to avenge one of their league losses, when they host Cedarburg (6-3, 11-6) on Friday.
"We didn't give them our best effort last time around," said Stuve.
Against Lutheran (2-7, 4-10), the Warhawks gave mostly a good effort, going up by nine at the half (28-19) before holding the Red Knights off down the stretch.
The Warhawks were an impressive 25 of 34 from the foul line including 15 of 18 in the final moments. Guard Rachel Hoft had 14 points including 10-of-10 free throws, including an eight-of-eight effort in the final stanza. She also had six assists.
Guard Taylor Johnston did her bit in stepping up, scoring 15 points, including four 3-pointers. Forward Eliza Wortman led the way with 16.
"Our posts did a good job of kicking the ball out to open shooters," Stuve said.
Against Bay, the Warhawks took the normally stingy Blue Dukes (5-5, 7-8) apart in the first half, hitting an almost perfect of 15 of 17 from two-point range in building a 31-14 lead.
"I knew that they were shorthanded but that they also had a lot of good shooters," said Bay coach Greg Capper. "It got so at one point that I looked at (assistant coach) Dave (Markson) and asked him at one point, 'Have you ever seen a team shoot 75 percent for a half?' It was impressive."
Wortman was unstoppable this night with 25 points as Johnston had nine and Hoft eight.
"I think we're back on track," said Stuve. "The last three games or so, we've averaged something like 66 points a game."
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