Wildcats looking inside for success Team haircut motivates Panthers

BANGOR – The Presque Isle girls basketball team erased two seasons of frustrating quarterfinal exits with a 46-31 victory over Belfast Saturday.

The No. 1 Wildcats earned the win with just one made 3-pointer in the game. It’s a sign of a changed Presque Isle team. Instead of relying on perimeter shooting, the ‘Cats have gone inside.

“The last couple of years we’ve basically lost our games because we couldn’t make 3s,” coach Jeff Hudson said. “This year we want to take it to the hole.”

That’s something Presque Isle has been able to do all season thanks to the development of 5-foot-10 center Angela Norsworthy.

Playing a full load of minutes despite dealing with a painful sprained right wrist, Norsworthy led the Wildcats with 15 points Saturday.

She came off the bench last year.

“We’ve had inside players, but Angela gives us an inside presence that we haven’t really ever had before,” senior point guard Katie Delong said. “With her we have a better inside game. She just has an inside finesse that she can go baseline, which is one of her better moves.”

Presque Isle has also looked to 5-7 senior Moriah Morris inside, too. She had four points against the No. 9 Lions but led the Wildcats with eight rebounds.

Presque Isle didn’t have a great shooting effort overall – the ‘Cats were 15-for-37 from the field – but took fewer 3-point attempts this year than in past tourney games.

Delong made PI’s only long-range shot of the nine attempted Saturday. The Wildcats were 4-for-28 in 2005 and 2-for-12 in 2004.

Even Delong and fellow senior guard Kylan Smith, who both traditionally camped outside for open looks, are penetrating more often.

“In the past we’ve taken many 3-pointers and we just knew that if we were going to win, we’d need to work inside-out instead of outside-in, and that’s what we tried to do,” Delong said.

A little off the top

The entire Medomak Valley boys team from Waldoboro was feeling the frigid temperature outside the Bangor Auditorium even more than normal Saturday morning.

All 15 players were sporting fresh “buzzcut” hairstyles and headbands as a show of team unity and spirit.