Overall inexperienced SWV girls look to continue making strides

CORNING — Southwest Valley girls basketball coach Mike Cormack liked what he saw in flashes against Nodaway Valley Tuesday, however the Wolverines simply had too much firepower and overcame the Timberwolves, 82-39.

The Wolverines are ranked seventh in Class 2A and are a program Cormack, who is in his second season, would like his Timberwolves to be like in a few years.

Southwest Valley is out to a 1-3 start, their win coming against Griswold in the first game of the season. Since then, the Timberwolves have lost to Shenandoah, Mount Ayr and Nodaway Valley.

“We knew coming into the season that our greatest weakness was going to be our inexperience. We really have two players who have played at the varsity level of any sort, so at this point we’re actually really pleased with where we’re at,” Cormack said. “After the game against Nodaway Valley, we said we played well in a couple of different stretches. If you took the first and third quarters together, it’s a five-point ballgame. For half of the game we could play with them. The other quarters got away.”

Cormack praised the efforts of Nodaway Valley in being able to pull away, and especially the scoring efforts of senior Maddax DeVault and sophomore Lindsey Davis, who scored 30 and 28 points, respectively. The Timberwolves were paced by its two players with varsity experience, Norah Lund with 15 points and Maggie Haer with nine.

On Saturday night, Southwest Valley has a unique opportunity to play conference foe Martensdale-St. Marys at Wells Fargo Arena.

“We’re gonna learn from games [like the one against NV] and know that we’re a learning, growing team,” Cormack said. “There have been flashes in every game we’ve been happy with. As we get more experience we’re going to be a better team in game 10 than we are in game four. We basically lose three players out of 22 in the offseason, so we just want to keep making strides in games, get that experience, and we’re pleased with how we played in stretches the other night.”