BROOKSVILLE - What do you do when you're on the winning side of a blowout and you're asked to say something about Nature Coast's 70-19 victory over Springstead?
Cherikan Waddy didn't want to sound cocky, but, then again, she didn't want to spoon out a big dose of mock humility either. So Waddy chose to be honest.
"We had to ... we had to put it on them."
Indeed.
Waddy scored nine of her 10 points in the Sharks' 16-0 run that opened the game. The rest of the game featured a deluge of Nature Coast buckets, interspersed with a couple of Eagles' scores. The only semblance of a Springstead run was the Taylor Agricola Show toward the end of the second quarter. The freshman scored six in a row, four coming on fastbreak layups, and she had a couple of steals.
"That's the one good thing I took away from this game," Springstead coach Greg Linley said. "That's a nice way to begin her career."
He meant Agricola's spurt, not the 51-point loss.
Nature Coast (1-0), meanwhile, breezed through the evening. Since the game was never close, there wasn't much emotion from the girls sporting the white and sky blue jerseys. Coach Jason Montgomery got a chance to play most of his bench. Nine players scored, with Waddy, Jessica Eberts (12), Kaitlin Wadsworth (10) and Shereka Maner (12) scoring in double figures.
And the Sharks, for the most part, are a bunch of youngsters. Eberts was the only upperclassman to see time on the floor. The squad features two freshmen in the starting lineup - Maner and Anthony. Maner is a tall, lithe and talented forward. She scored a couple of buckets down low and stroked two 3-pointers. Anthony is the little point guard running the offense, a tough job for someone barely a teenager.
"Sometimes I think I'm too hard on her," said Montgomery, who barked several instructions Anthony's way during the game. "But she's handling things really well."
The rest of the underclassmen showed promise. They forced Springstead (0-1) into several turnovers, spread the ball around and knocked down open shots. The Sharks made eight 3-pointers.
After the game, Montgomery stepped outside the locker room with his shirt collar unbuttoned, pondered the night's performance and saw a vision.
"We'll have most of this group together for three years," he said. "I really like the future."
