The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

DAYTON - Dayton's girls claimed victory over Walla Walla Valley Acade- my, Saturday-the sandwich game between crushing defeats to DeSales, Friday, and Lewiston JV, Tuesday. The Lady Bulldogs beat WWVA by eight, 41-33, after first being trounced by first place DeSales, 57- 32. The Dogs took another beating Tuesday, 52-15, in a mostly meaningless nonleaguer, by Lewiston.

Dayton coach Clayton Strong opted to play his second string a significant amount of time Tuesday, while experimenting with different sets.

"(Lewiston) hit shots tonight. They were about 7-for-19 from the 3-point line and we didn't shoot very well," Strong said. "We were trying some new stuff since it was our last chance in a non-league game. And we played a lot of kids to limit minutes for our (league) stretch run. Continuity probably wasn't the best because of the running the kids in and out there, but I thought we played hard."

Lewiston led 23-10 at half, then held Dayton score- less in the third to bump its lead up by 16 more. The Bengals led 39-10 going into the fourth. Dayton's boosted their shot attempts in the fourth after taking a scant four in the third, but still managed to tally just five to finish off the 52-15 pasting.

Lewiston is Idaho Class 5A, the largest classification in the state.

Saturday's contest with last place WWVA started happily and ended similarly. The Lady Dogs pounced on the Knights in an 11-2 first quarter. WWVA cut the lead to five heading into break, but pulled no closer the rest of the way.

"We had them down nine a couple times in the first half," said Strong. "We just about had them broke, but we let them hang around with a couple of communication lapses. They got a couple of cheap buckets at the end of the half."

McKayla Bickelhaupt held high point honors with 19, including 8-of-9 from free throw line. Megan Gregg tallied 10 for WWVA.

"I thought Sarah (Phillips) and Jessica (Tate) played re- ally good defense on their best perimeter players," Strong noted. "(WWVA's) coach said they were aver- aging a combined 30 points per game, but we held them to six."

Friday's loss at DeSales was over at half. The Irish bolted to a 20 point lead, 33- 13 at halftime, then coasted the rest of the way to the 25-point victory.

"After the first four min- utes it was tied, and then we went cold," Strong said. "We didn't cover the shoot- ers-the Acock girl in par- ticular-and we ended up down 20 by half and shell- shocked. We played them pretty much straight-up in the second half and started to figure out how to guard their bigs inside and still get out on their shooters. But we'd dug ourselves too big of hole by that time."

Bickelhaupt scored 14 to lead the Lady Dogs, though she struggled mightily from the field. Bickelhaupt hit on just 1-of-12 shots in the first three quarters before finally getting untracked in the fourth.

Teresa Acock and Abby Crowley paced DeSales with 16 and 12 points respec- tively.

Dayton's record adjusts to 3-1 in league, 10-3 overall. The Dogs hit the home hard- wood again on Friday versus Tri-Cities Prep.