Consistency — and  the lack thereof — has been one of the bigger talking points for the Wright City girls basketball team this season.

According to Head Coach Fred Ross, the Wildcats were making progress in recent games heading into Tuesday’s showdown with Community.

“We boxed out well and played physical against Silex and Louisiana,” Ross said, “but we didn’t seem to do so tonight.”

Community pressed full-court and harassed Wright City en route to a 47-14 win, pushing the Wildcats to 2-9 on the season.

“We were ready for the press, and in the first quarter I thought we did well,” Ross said. “But we’re a young team and we just get frustrated. We run around and get panicked, and that’s the drawback of not having basketball players and just having athletes. Because basketball players won’t panic like that. We get in that situation and we start doing the things we shouldn’t be doing.”

Community seized the opportunity in the first half, scoring the majority of its 27 points in transition following Wright City turnovers.

The Wildcats struggled to get the ball past half court much of the time.

“Our spacing wasn’t very good, and when we get tired, our cutting gets slow,” Ross said. “We talk about doing the right thing over and over and over. If it works, great. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll adapt to it. But we can’t freelance and start chucking the ball, and we still do that quite a bit.”

Ross tried substituting players in and out in groups of five as he looked for a spark off the bench.

“We were working in groups, so I just wanted to get the whole group out at once and talk about what they did right and what they did wrong and get them back in there,” he said. “We’ve been working with group subs when teams put their second group in.”

He said he liked what he saw from his offense early in the game, despite the missed shots.

“We had some younger girls that did some good things,” he said. “I thought we played well in the first half, especially defensively. I thought we ran our offense well, too, and got some good looks. We got inside, curled off the picks and really worked through screens.”

But the lack of depth on the roster hampered any comeback bids.

“Once I get past those first five girls and have to sub, it’s a real drop off,” he added. “Those girls have to know they have to work twice as hard, but they just go through the motions sometimes.”

Kailyn Gudermuth, Lilly Sargent and Nikki Stiles all got significant minutes off the bench in the loss, and Ross was pleased with his team’s effort in the final minutes of the lopsided game.

“We got on the floor and got loose balls, so I was happy with that,” he said. “But our blocking out was poor tonight. They were more physical than us.”

The Wildcats travel to Transportation and Law Friday afternoon, and Ross hopes his bench can continue to improve heading into the final stretch of games this season.

“Communication wasn’t good tonight, either,” he said. “Girls weren’t picking up the girls they were supposed to, and then they scramble and the fouls start. So we’ll work on the communication aspect.”