Woodland girls basketball begins 2024-2025 season

Woodland High School’s varsity girls basketball team outscored visiting Bloomfield in every quarter on its way to a 71-30 win Nov. 25.

It took a few minutes for the host Cardinals to find their stride — they didn’t score first and missed a couple of shot attempts — but most of their early possessions weren’t met with too much resistance.

“I really didn’t like the way we started out, I thought we were kind of flat,” Woodland girls head coach Paul Lynch. “We’re battling a couple of injuries, some illness, but we’re not an excuse team. We’ve got to fight through that. It’s the first game of the year, so I knew it’d be a little bit rough but once we kind of settled in we started to do some good things.”

Woodland forced six first-quarter turnovers in taking a 15-10 advantage after eight minutes. After a made field goal by Bloomfield senior Abbigail Heaton gave the visitors a 2-0 lead with 6:35 left in the early going, Woodland got a pair of free throw from senior Tallie Johnson, plus an offensive rebound and put back by Johnson as part of an 8-0 run that prompted a Panthers’ timeout. A basket by Bloomfield’s Ava Porter cut the deficit to 8-4 but the Panthers would get no closer the rest of the game.

The Cardinals made six of 15 shots in the opening quarter, including a 3-pointer by freshman Ella Cook, while the Panthers were 5-for-11.

During one timeout, Lynch specifically wanted to see improvement at the defense end. That also was a focal point at the half.

“We talked about our rotation at halftime, and that’s something that we’re still learning and working on. We’ve got a lot of young girls that are still learning the high school game, and it’s going to be a process throughout the season. Bloomfield came out with a lot of intensity, and kind of took it to us early on, so we had to pick up the intensity to try and turn things around.”

The Cardinals began the second quarter on a 6-2 run, pushing its lead to 21-12. A pair of baskets from Cook plus a steal and layup from Johnson were part of the strong second quarter start.

Bloomfield was within six, at 26-20, but the Cardinals responded with a 7-2 end of the quarter.

Overall, Woodland tallied 18 of 30 points the second quarter in taking a 33-22 lead at the half.

Woodland outscored Bloomfield 16-6 in the third quarter, taking a 49-28 advantage into the last quarter. The third quarter featured an 8-0 run, with two baskets each from Barks and Massa, transforming a 41-24 lead into a 49-24 edge.

Following consecutive field goals by the Panthers in the quarter’s closing minute, Johnson corralled a loose ball and banked in a buzzer beater to close the third period.

Heaton, who lead the Panthers’ with 12 points, hit a shot with 6:10 to go in the final quarter to snap a 9-0 Cardinals’ run. After that, Woodland scored the final 12 points with a running clock, getting five field goals and two free throws.

“It’s a difficult situation when you do get a lead like that but you still have kids that have to continue to develop in-game situations. You try to get players in but you’re still focused on execution because you never know when someone goes down and your number is going to be called, you’re got to be ready to go.

Addy Massa led four Cardinals in double figures with 21 points. Mallary Barks contributed 14, all in the first three quarters, while Tallie Johnson and Ella Cook each finished with 11 points. The Cardinals were 28-for-53 (52.8%) and shot 10-for-12 (83.3%) from the foul line. Bloomfield was 13-for-31 (41.9%) and committed 22 turnovers.

The Cardinals were 18-10 a year ago, tying for the conference title and winning the Stoddard Conference tournament.

“We’re looking to try and better those (accomplishments) this year,” Lynch said. He is in his fourth season as head coach of the Cardinals. “We try to go hard in practice so that it’s easy in the game. We’ve had some really good week in practice. This group is really focused, really fun to work with, but we’ve had our challenges. We’ve had some injuries that have lowered our numbers so it makes it harder to go as hard as you’d like to in practice. The game is our test, and tonight, we passed some areas of the test and we’ve got some areas we’ve got to improve on.”

Mallary Barks and Addy Massa are both returning All-Conference and All-District players.

Ella Cook has solidified a role in the early going, and Lynch is banking on the experience of seniors Tallie Johnson and Maci McIntyre.

“We’ve got a good group of experience and we’ve got some young kids who are hungry and we’re hoping that we can blend those all together,” Lynch said.

In addition to Barks, Massa, Cook, Johnson and McIntyre, the roster consists of sophomores Mollie Long and freshmen Elsy Hulve, Dezi Braswell, Peyton Hinkle. Assisting Lynch this year is Lauren Gaines.

“Our basketball program is built on team, we believe in team, and that’s what we’ll continue to work on is everybody filling their role, and if we have a chance to have a good season,” Lynch said.

“I think that we’ve got enough experience and some young kids back that I think we’ve got a chance to be as good as we were last year, I’m hoping that we can take another step forward toward our goal of winning another district. That’s our ultimate goal.

"Hopefully over the course of the year we’ll progress enough to put ourselves in that position, but we’ve got a long way to go.”

“(The) expectations are for us to compete every night, so that when we walk off the court, everyone knows that we put out 150%. I think that we’ve got a good nucleus with some experience from last year. The big thing is we’ve got to stay healthy.”