Lake Orion junior Nevaeh Wood goes up for a shot against Clarkston during the girls varsity basketball game on Friday. See page 10 for more Dragon sports. Photo by John Ranson/Winship Studios.

By Wendi Reardon Price
Staff Writer
INDEPENDENCE TWP. — Lake Orion Girls Varsity Basketball journey to Clarkston High School ended in a 60-48 loss in the OAA Red last Friday.
“We didn’t take care of the ball tonight,” said Bob Brydges, head coach for Lake Orion. “We had almost 20 turnovers. You can’t turn the ball over against good teams. They are going to run it out, they are going to score on you. They are going to make life miserable. Kudos to those guys. They played really well defensively. They played really good man gap defense and took away a lot of our driving opportunities.”
“Defense really set the tone in this one,” said Aaron Goodnough, head coach for the Wolves.
The game opened with Lake Orion grabbing possession at tip off, but it would end quickly with a steal from junior Ellery Hernandez.
Hernandez scored seconds later on a 3-point, starting a 13-point run for the Wolves with five points from junior Elia Morgner, three points from freshman Brooklyn Covert, and two points from sophomore Elli Robak.
Lake Orion senior Ryann Pawlaczyk scored two points from the free throw line, putting the Dragons on the board with 2:52 remaining in the first quarter.
Clarkston senior Emily Valencia scored a basket before junior Dragon Izzy Wotlinski scored three points off a basket and a free throw shot.
The Wolves ended the quarter with a 22-6 lead after Covert scored on a 3-pointer at the buzzer.
“That’s the second bad first quarter in a row,” said Brydges. “We had a bad first quarter on Tuesday against West Bloomfield. We had a bad first quarter here tonight.”
“When you get a first quarter like that our larger issue was the rest of the game and keeping them in the zone,” Goodnough shared.
Lake Orion opened the second quarter with a combination of six points from with four points from Wotlinski and two on the line from Pawlaczyk.
The Wolves continued their momentum which included back to back 3-point shots from Covert and Robak to help close the half 39-20.
“We still struggled on offense,” said Goodnough. “It doesn’t look like we did, but we did. There’s still things we’re working on it. We’re very young, and we get those big doe eyes going in times.”
“We were down 19 at half. We won a second half,” said Brydges. “It’s not that we can’t play with these teams we have to want to play with these teams and these guys have got to figure out how to get themselves mentally prepared to play that person second quarter. Right now we don’t come out in the first quarter with that mentality. I’s something I’ve got to work on and I’ve got to be better at. You can put it on me.”
Wotlinski led with 18 points and had seven rebounds. Pawlaczyk had 13 points and junior Charlie Peplowski had seven points.
“Izzy played outstanding tonight,” said Brydges. “She is one of our top players. Other than that we just have to rebound better. We just have to play better defense. The biggest thing for us is if you’ve watched last five years that I’ve been here, our defense has been stellar. Right now we are struggling on defense. We just got to get better. Defense isn’t necessarily a talent thing. It’s a want to thing. You got to want to play defense.
Lake Orion opened the week and the OAA Red league with a 74-27 loss to West Bloomfield on Tuesday, Jan. 16.
Peplowski, Wotlinski and Pawlaczyk each scored six points.
The Dragons (7-2, 0-2 OAA Red) opened the week against Kingston.
“They are going to be very good,” said Brydges. “It’ll be a tough competition. They are very good every year and that’s why we schedule them. I want to keep playing good competition.”
Lake Orion host Rochester on Thursday and Oxford on Tuesday, Jan. 30. JV plays at 5:30 p.m., varsity follows.
“I’ve got great kids,” said Brydges. “I love my kids. They work hard. I just have to get them mentality to the point to play at this level. We will get there. It’s a learning process, and we’ve got a lot more kids playing minutes than they have played the last couple of years. We graduated nine seniors, you are going to have a set back sometimes. We are seeing the set back right now. It’s up to me. It’s up to the coaching staff to rally these kids and give them better ideas of what we need to do and go from there. Just keep working – that’s what we need to keep playing is tough.”