Lansing girls stay unbeaten in basketball with home victory against Gardner Edgerton

If you were to look at the box score of Friday night’s girl’s basketball game between Lansing and Gardner Edgerton, there’s one name that stands out above the rest: Kamryn Farris.

Farris scored a game-high 27 points for the host Lansing Lions as they defeated the Gardner Edgerton Trailblazers 58-34. The next-closest scorer had 11 points.

But the box score tells little about how the game went. For starters, Lansing held just a four-point lead heading into the final quarter, slowly letting slip of a 13-point lead it had after the first quarter.

Second, Farris was certainly the main contributor on offense for Lansing, but that’s not all she has to her game.

“She might be the best defender I’ve coached in 16 years,” Lansing head coach KC Simmons said. “She just does everything really well on the defensive end.

“Just a great kid, and the kids feed off her energy when she gets going and our kids do a good job of just trying to feed the rock to the hot hand.”

A 5-foot-11 forward, Farris led the Lions in all aspects of the game. One moment she was boxing out an opponent to reel in a rebound and score the put-back, next she’d be making a lung-busting run to guard the oppositions best player. She also helped out her teammates on offense with a team-high four assists.

“I would say my teammates played a big role,” Farris said. “I try really hard to run down the floor and just get open, and my teammates did a really good job of feeding me the ball.”

Farris, a junior, was aided by fellow starters McKenzie Moburg, Caitlin Bishop and Skylar Weaver, who each chipped in with three assists for Lansing (8-0). Weaver also had a game-high eight boards.

As for the defense?

“I’ve always loved defense just because I think it’s something that doesn’t require a lot of skill,” Farris said. “I think if you just work hard at something everyone can be good at, that’s something that I always try my best and work hard to do and become better each game.

“I think it’s really fun to guard the best player just because I think it’s like relying on me to stop those girls that normally score 20 points a game.”

But the game wasn’t easy for Lansing.

Lansing ran out to a big start, taking a 19-6 lead into the second quarter. Farris was already leading the way by then, shooting a perfect 5 for 5 from the field and 2 for 2 from the free-throw line.

But shaky second and third quarters saw that lead shrink to as low as four points on multiple occasions in the third quarter.

The Trailblazers (4-4) were led primarily by floor general Kaelin Platt, who dictated the game for Gardner Edgerton as it fought its way back into the game. The Blazers’ offense relies heavily on rotation around the perimeter and Platt led the way.

The junior scored nine points, including a long three with a hand in her face. And when she wasn’t controlling the play from outside, sophomore Sariyah Williams was mopping up the loose balls inside.

Williams also finished with nine points as well as a team-high six rebounds.

“Sometimes we get a nice early lead and think the game is in hand and we can kind of coast,” Simmons said of his Lansing team.

“The second and third (quarters) we got a little lackadaisical with things, but it’s just as simple as taking care of the ball,” he continued. “Sometimes our own worst enemy is ourselves, so we’ve just got to stay out of our own way at times.”

Simmons emphasizes ball control and rebounding, aspects of the game he had to remind the Lions of heading into the final eight minutes on Friday.

Lansing exploded in the fourth quarter, spreading its lead from 34-30 to 45-32 within just three minutes.

“I think we kind of told everyone to calm down, take a deep breath,” Farris said. “And from there out we all just played as a team and pushed ahead from there.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 10:03 PM.