Hot start

ROCKFORD - Parkway hit two threes in the first 30 seconds and only gave up two points in the first quarter on the way to a commanding 56-19 victory over a shorthanded Celina team in a girls basketball game at Panther Gymnasium on Monday.

"We knew Celina was down some players due to sickness, so we wanted to come out and still play hard, regardless of who they had out on the floor," Parkway coach Dan Williamson said. "I thought for the most part we did. We missed some layups early, but that's going to happen. I thought we got good shots 90, 95 percent of our possessions."

Gabrielle Stober caught the ball off the tip from Allison Hughes and passed it straight to Paige Williamson in the right corner, where Williamson drained a three to give Parkway (8-2) the lead six seconds into the game.

On the Bulldogs' first possession, Emiree Knittle stole the ball on the other end and Stober hit a three from the right side to make it 6-0 with 7:30 left in the first.

"Paige and Gab and Emiree and a lot of the other girls can shoot threes, so when they have their feet set and they're open, they have the green light 100% of the time," coach Williamson said. "That's obviously a great way to start the game. I think we hit two threes from pretty close to the same spot in that corner."

Kyilla Billingsley got Celina (0-6) on the board a minute later with a layup and the defense forced a pair of empty possessions before Knittle stole the ball again and set up Williamson for another three with 5:05 left in the quarter. That started an 11-0 run to end the first, culminating with a deep three from Stober as the buzzer sounded to give the Panthers a 17-2 lead.

Stober added a pair of free throws before Billingsley snapped the run with a pair of buckets early in the second quarter, but Williamson got Parkway going again with a one-handed jumper from the right side and Knittle added a bucket to give the Panthers a 20-point lead.

Amelia Lutz hit a three for Celina midway through the second, but the Panthers kept adding on, and Williamson hit another jumper with 25 seconds left to make it 32-9 heading into the half.

"I thought we played hard," Celina coach Branden Rushton said. "We've been dealing with some illness, so we had four girls out. So we asked a bunch of girls that normally don't play a lot of varsity minutes to play tonight, and I thought they held their own."

With Celina missing junior Taylor Klingshirn, freshman Alex Kimmel stepped into the starting lineup, and two other freshmen, Jacci Felver and Kate Braun, were among the first off the bench for the Bulldogs.

Parkway's lead crossed the 30-point mark early in the fourth on a short jumper by Adria Miller, but Billingsley answered with two short layups on the other end. Williamson hit another three to make it 49-19 as the Panthers scored the final 10 points, with Hughes pushing the margin to 35 with a layup in the final three minutes of the fourth.

Hughes finished with 20 of Parkway's 33 rebounds and four steals to go with 11 points. Williamson led the Panthers with 17 points, while Stober scored 14.

"We shoot a lot of threes, but we get the ball into Allison Hughes quite a bit, and she does a good job," Williamson said. "Gab can get to the basket against a lot of defenders. Emiree's doing a better job of getting into the paint, and Paige is doing a better job of driving and not only being a 3-point shooter.

"Our 3-point shooting is more consistent, but it's not the only way we can score. Some teams kind of keyed on that last year, where if they shut our 3-point shooting down or we weren't hitting, we were going to struggle to score."

Billingsley recorded a double-digit night with 10 points for the Bulldogs.

"She stepped up," Rushton said. "We need her to play like that. The last few games, she's been trying to figure it out a little bit, but I think she got her footing underneath her a little bit. She didn't rush her shots and got in the rhythm of the offense, which obviously helps her."

Celina returns to action after the Christmas break in the OVISCO Classic at the Fieldhouse. Celina will play the second semifinal on Monday against St. Henry with Coldwater and Marion Local facing off at 6 p.m. in the opening game. Parkway has a long break before hosting Botkins on Jan. 3 then takes on conference champion Minster as the Midwest Athletic Conference schedule resumes on Jan. 6.