PORT ANGELES — The dog days aren’t just limited to the warm temperatures of August.
Sometimes they can crop up on a cold winter day in the middle of a long slog through the Northwest Athletic Conference North Region schedule.
The Peninsula College women’s basketball team did enough to win in relatively easy fashion in a 67-45 triumph over Shoreline on Saturday.
“I just wanted to get through the game and get to a week of practice where we could prepare for the second half,” Pirates coach Alison Crumb said.
“I thought we shot kind of off, but overall we did some good things.”
Peninsula controlled the game from the opening tip, rolling to a 14-6 lead after one quarter, and a 33-15 advantage at halftime.
“I thought we controlled possession and we built a pretty sizeable lead,” Crumb said.
This despite playing in a crowded but quiet gym and against a team with nothing to lose.
“It was a tough kind of environment for the team to play in a little bit,” Crumb said.
“It was kind of awkwardly quiet, which is fine.
“And Shoreline was super scrappy, they’d run three people at the ball or fly five people into an offensive rebound.
“We are just not used to seeing that because if it works, great, but if it doesn’t we usually get an easy layup out of it.
“They were really playing with no fear or no care at all and coming after us. And at times I thought we handled it fairly well.”
The Dolphins outscored Peninsula 15-14 in the third quarter, taking advantage of some Peninsula turnovers.
The Pirates coughed up the ball 19 times, compared to 15 for Shoreline.
“We just aren’t used to playing that out of control and it forced us to play a little more out of control than we are accustomed to,” Crumb said.
“But nobody got hurt and we got to play a lot of different players.”
The Dolphins may have been scrappy, but they also were never much of a threat to make a run and make a close game against Peninsula.
“Second half we got to rotate a lot of people,” Crumb said.
“That was important to me. They have earned it, they work their butts off every day in practice.”
Cierra Moss had a game-high 14 points for the Pirates. She added three assists and three rebounds.
Older sister Cherish Moss, earned Crumb’s praise for filling up the stat line.
“I thought Cherish played great,” Crumb said.
“She had six points, eight boards, six assists, two steals. Just very active on the rebounds and in getting the ball into the post.
“She made some great passes, and consequently I think Tai [Thomas] had 10 points because of Cherish’s passes.
“I thought she played the best out of anybody for us.”
Zhara Laster added six points, 11 rebounds and two steals for Peninsula.
The Pirates (6-1, 15-5) have completed the first half of North Region play and are in a first-place tie with Bellevue (6-1, 16-4) and Skagit Valley (6-1, 16-7).
Peninsula hosts perennial NWAC-bottom feeder Edmonds (1-6, 2-17) at 4 p.m. Saturday.
“We start the second half with some of the lower[-echelon] teams in the region and we have an opportunity to work on ourselves and put ourselves in a good position for the playoffs,” Crumb said.
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Sports reporter Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-452-2345, ext. 5250 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com
