Southeast girls begin annual holiday tuneup with a romp

When trying to get better at anything, the saying has always been “practice makes perfect.”

Southeast High School girls head coach John Harder uses the Willie Clemons Classic to do just that for his team.

“We absolutely use this tournament to prepare ourselves for district play,” Harder said. “We’ve played in this for 13 years and it’s always been within about 30 days of our district run. It has always been a great measuring stick.”

The Seminoles (10-5) used a stingy defense and efficient offense to run away with a 51-19 victory against visiting Seminole Osceola on Tuesday, the tournament’s first day.

“The girls played extremely well tonight, we needed a bounce back game after our loss to Booker last week,” Harder said. “We have a young team, no starting seniors so we are all trying to learn as we go along.”

The Warriors struggled all night getting quality looks to fall, shooting 23 percent from the field and 19 percent from beyoung the 3-point arc.

Southeast took a 27-9 lead into the half behind the play of Amoni Waiters, who scored 14 of her game-high 22 in the first half.

“Amoni is a versatile big for us; she did a fantastic job of getting us going offensively,” Harder said. “Her play inside gave us great looks from the outside.”

Payton Hill lead Miramar with nine points, followed by Maddison Vaughn who finished with eight.

The Seminoles play Miramar on Wednesday in the semifinals.

This story was originally published December 28, 2016 at 4:52 PM with the headline "Southeast girls begin annual holiday tuneup with a romp."