You know the one about it’s not how you start, but it’s how you finish? Tecumseh’s girls basketball team hopes that is true about the season because it sure wasn’t true about Saturday afternoon’s season opener.

Westerville North scored the first 16 points and the Arrows never made a serious run at the Warriors in a 75-55 nonconference loss.

“I think a lot of it was nerves,” said Arrows senior star Bianca Quisenberry. “New basketball season, new start – we have a lot of high expectations for our team. We’ll get better.”

The first thing Arrows coach Danielle Thomas talked about after the game was the first quarter, which ended with her team trailing 23-6. The Warriors made three 3-pointers in the opening run and four for the quarter. Thomas said the Warriors’ 3-point accuracy wasn’t in the scouting report.

“It’s all in the first quarter,” Thomas said. “We hung with them the other three. We’ve got to come out and defend the first quarter. I’ll give Westerville North credit – they came out on fire.”

The Arrows committed six turnovers during the 16-0 run and finished with 20. The first half was characterized by the Warriors scoring from long range, getting second and third shots on almost every possession and disrupting Tecumseh’s offense by either stealing or deflecting a lot of routine passes.

“We picked it up the next three, but it’s hard when you dig that big of a hole to come out of it,” Quisenberry said.

Quisenberry, who has signed to play at Cincinnati, overcame a slow start to score 22 points, which was right at her average last year.

The bright spot for the Arrows was the play of 5-foot-9 junior Mallory Rice in the post. She was a big scorer on the junior varsity last year and got limited varsity experience behind Chelsey Davis, who averaged 15.3 points a game as a senior. Rice scored 17 points in her first start.

“She looked good,” Thomas said. “She had a couple young mistakes, but she came to play. I think she’ll definitely fill a lot of what we’ll miss from Chelsey graduating.”

Quisenberry was glad to see Rice respond well to the physical play the Warriors threw at her in the lane.

“Mal’s a strong person, so if you get her involved she does great,” Quisenberry said. “And that’s what we tried to do.”

Tecumseh senior starting guard Brittany Frappier left the game in the first half with what Thomas said is probably a concussion.

Symone Simmons scored 15 points in the first half and led North with 20 points. Gabrielle Pace scored 10 of her 14 in the second half.