Lady Raiders pick up wins over OE and ER

Portland 61, Ovid Elsie 42

The Portland High School girls basketball team (6-2) traveled to Ovid-Elsie on Monday night to take on the 2-2 Marauders.

The Lady Raiders jumped out to an early start and never looked back, beating OE 61-42.

Junior Ashley Bower led the Portland offense with 25 points. Junior Ava Guilford added 11 points, while junior Breckyn Werner added six points while tallying 10 rebounds.

Scoring by quarter:

1st – 2nd – 3rd – 4th – Final

Portland 13 – 20 – 19 – 9 – 61

OE 9 – 2 – 17 – 14 – 42

Portland 51, Eaton Rapids 21

Portland hosted Eaton Rapids on Tuesday night. The Lady Raiders defeated the Greyhounds 51-21.

Portland was led offensively by Bower with 17 points, and Guilford with 16 points.

Eaton Rapids was led by senior Emily Cline with 10 points.

Scoring by quarter:

1st – 2nd – 3rd – 4th – Final

Portland 15 – 11 – 14 – 11 – 51

Eaton Rapids 8 – 8 – 1 – 4 – 21

After the win over Eaton Rapids, Portland Head Coach Jason Haid told the Beacon, “We weren’t ready to play. We got out to a slow start. I thought we let Cline make too many easy baskets. It was someone we knew we had to stop and I think she started out with the first 10 points of the game for them. Little disappointed defensively with our start but very pleased with the way that we responded in the second half.”

Haid said, “I thought we played a little bit looser in the second half. I thought our shooters were shooting the ball, and we were moving a little bit better. We were getting up the floor a little bit better. I think a lot of that started with our defense. We got a couple easy run out lay-ups from our defense. Ava Guilford had a couple nice looks from the outside. One of them was really deep. She is really getting her confidence back and that is good to see. Ashley as well, Ashley played a great defensive game. After those first ten points Ashley just really put the clamps down on Cline there in the second half. She was up for the challenge in the second half. That got our offense going too. Breckyn battled on the boards all night. She had nine rebounds. Good hustle play by her. Shalyn came off the bench and gave us some nice minutes when Liv went down with an injury. Shalyn got in the lane a couple of times and got some buckets, and I thought she rebounded really well night.”

Haid went on to say, “Just really pleased with how we responded and didn’t let up there in the second half. I am proud of the girls. That is four games in five days. With the conference championship kind of on the line there, we have earned a share of the conference, but there was not a big celebration in the locker room after the game because they don’t want to share it with anyone and they are looking forward to the next conference game where we can win it out right.”

As of Tuesday evening, the MHSAA shows the CAAC White standings as follows:

Team Conf Ovr

Portland 6-0 8-2

Charlotte 3-1 5-2

Lan. Catholic 2-2 5-2

Ionia 1-3 2-5

Eaton Rapids 0-6 1-8

The Raiders will be traveling to Bath on Friday night. The teams have not faced each other in recent years.

As for what he expected in Bath, Haid said, “They have a couple of nice players. They play in a tough conference. It is one of those things when the schedules got shuffled around, it was just a couple of coaches that know each other and said ‘hey do you have an opening’ and it just kind of worked out on the schedule at the last minute. We are looking forward to going over there. I am sure it will be a competitive game. Then we have another team in their conference that is one of the best teams in the state there and that is Fowler coming next week. So, we have some challenging games ahead in Fowler and then Haslett next weekend. An undefeated division 1 team that is playing very well. We still need to fix some things. We are not anywhere near where we need to be and I am looking forward to the challenges ahead.”

Photos by AJ Guilford.