(Glenwood) -- Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln (2-0) spoiled Glenwood’s season opener Tuesday, taking down the Rams (0-1) 62-51.
The Lynx led wire-to-wire en route to their second straight win to start the year.
“This is a brand new team we’ve got this year,” Abraham Lincoln head coach Chad Schaa said. “We graduated a lot of seniors, so we’re really young, but we did bring back three returners. We definitely are a fast team. We really get up and down the court and that’s something we work on everyday with these girls. We just wanna push and run. We feel like we have the athletes to run the court with a lot of teams.”
Emily Pomernackas led Abraham Lincoln in scoring for the second time in as many games, finishing with 15 points.
“We talked about how this would be a big win for us, so it feels really good to get the win,” Pomernackas said. “I thought we did our job on defense. We played pretty good offense. There are a few things we need to fix here and there, but I thought it was good.”
Abraham Lincoln jumped out to a 13-2 lead to open the game and never relinquished the advantage, despite multiple comeback efforts from Glenwood.
“I thought part of the reason they had some of their comebacks were free throws, so we focused on not fouling and being a little bit more patient on offense and taking better shots,” Pomernackas said.
Abraham Lincoln had to battle foul trouble all night, having committed 13 fouls in the first half to Glenwood’s four.
Despite the foul trouble, some solid work in the paint from Jeena Carle and timely buckets from Pomernackas and Hutson Rau gave the Lynx a 31-24 halftime lead.
The second half brought about much of the same, with the Rams repeatedly making runs and Abraham Lincoln repeatedly answering.
After the Lynx opened up a 37-28 lead, Glenwood’s Jenna Hopp went on an 8-0 run of her own to bring her team back within one.
Hopp, the South Dakota State commit who is widely considered one of the top talents in the state of Iowa, finished the game with 25 points.
“The plan was to do a lot of face guarding against her and just make it really difficult for her to have touches,” Schaa said. “Then, when she got the touch, our defense wanted to slide over and help on that so she couldn’t penetrate, because she is a bulldozer. She can get to the hoop. She’s one of the best players in the state.”
Hopp’s best efforts to bring the Rams back into the game was continually squandered thanks to timely three-point shooting from Abraham Lincoln’s Megan Elam, who finished the night with 14 points. Rau also dropped 14, while Carle poured in 10 points.
“We love to share the ball,” Pomernackas said. “All of us can shoot and we’re all able to score, so it just opens up our offense.”
In their two games thus far, the Lynx have flexed the muscles of their balanced scoring attack, with four players in double figures in both contests.
“We have girls that can pick it up and score at any time,” Schaa said. “We’ve got some athletes who, if they get to the paint and elevate and get the shot off, we feel really confident in.”
Abraham Lincoln sees its 2-0 start as something to build on as the young season progresses.
“We gotta keep working on our conditioning,” Schaa said. “With the shot clock era, it’s gonna be just up and down. We gotta work on other people getting some more time so we have fresher legs as well, but overall we just gotta keep working on scoring, defense and just all the little things that every team’s gonna do.”
Abraham Lincoln will look to remain undefeated in a conference road bout with Sioux City North Friday, while Glenwood seeks its first win of the season when it travels to Atlantic Friday.
View the full interviews with Pomernackas and Schaa below.
