For at least one night, the press worked.

Without much size down low this season, the Wright City girls basketball team has wanted to harass its opponents for the length of the court, creating turnovers and negating any disadvantage it has in the paint.

Tuesday night, the Wildcats (1-1) stifled Barat Academy en route to a 45-21 win.

“We did a lot of good things,” Head Coach Fred Ross said. “This was the first time we’ve pressed in probably four years, so we’ve been really working hard at it lately. We gave up some easy baskets at times in transition, and I kind of figured that would happen.”

The Wildcat pressure was ineffective late in the first quarter, as an 8-2 Barat run gave the Eagles a 10-8 lead after one.

Wright City’s offense struggled in the half-court throughout the night.

“We had a lot of really good shots, we just weren’t draining them,” Ross said. “We’ve really got to work on getting our legs underneath us and following through to the basket. It’s early in the year and we’ve been working a lot on our conditioning because we knew we were going to press.”

Ross’ team looked anything but tired past the midway point of the second quarter.

Fueled by a 13-2 run and buzzer-beating layup by         senior Nikki Stiles, the Wildcats took a 29-17 lead at halftime and never looked back.

Junior Abbey Jaspering and junior Amy Janowski led the team with 12 and 11 points, respectively.

Stiles and junior Jada Hunter added six, and the Wildcats held Barat without a field goal in the second half.

“It was a team effort tonight,” Ross said. “Everybody had a couple of steals, which was nice. Amy did a nice job of handling the ball and Jada was great defensively. She guarded their best girl and held her to six points, so that’s a plus.”

There were times when Barat was able to break the initial pressure and finish with layups, and Ross said he hopes to fix the holes in the coming weeks.

“But the hustle is there,” he said, “and I like that.”

The Wildcats host Bowling Green next week, and Ross hopes for a competitive game.

“They’ll be a tough matchup for us, but one of our goals is to compete with our conference opponents this season,” he said. “We want to compete and see what happens.”