Baldwin High has owned the Top Gun Invitational girls basketball tournament in recent seasons, but the Bulldogs won’t have that experience to fall back on at 6:15 tonight when they take on Kansas City Piper in the first round at Wellsville.

“We’ve won the tournament three years in a row, but we also graduated six seniors,” said Baldwin coach Eric Toot, who lost five starters and his top reserve from last year’s 17-5 club. “That was a whole other team.”

Things started off well for Baldwin (6-3), which won six of its first seven games before suffering a pair of eight-point losses to Ottawa and De Soto last week.

Ottawa (8-1) is the top seed in the Top Gun. Baldwin is No. 2 on the other side of the bracket.

“We just ran into two pretty good teams,” Toot said. “Both games were pretty close. Those are two of the best teams in our league. We just have to score consistently.”

Baldwin averages a modest 43.5 points a game, but the Bulldogs are allowing opponents only 42.5 per game.

“Our defense has been excellent all year,” Toot said. “That’s the reason we’ve been able to win six games. I think we’ll end up being a real good team if we can be more consistent offensively.”

Junior forward Katelyn Miles leads Baldwin with an average of 12 points a game. Sophomore guard Kelsey Verhaeghe averages nine, and junior center Denise Orloff adds 7.5 points and 10.5 rebounds per game.

Ottawa, which faces Saint Marys at 7:30 tonight, has had no trouble putting points on the board with 6-foot senior center Kelsie Studley, who averages 19.5 points and seven rebounds.

“Our guards have done a great job of getting her the ball,” Ottawa coach Clifton McCullough said.

But McCullough would like to see guards Megan Ramsey (16 ppg), Mallory Geist (10 ppg) and Jara Vance (six assists, six points per game) shoot more effectively from the outside to open things up for Studley inside.

“Teams are going to start sagging in on Kelsey,” McCullough said. “We have outside shooters. We just need to step up and hit the shots.”

In another game involving area teams, Eudora will face host Wellsville at 7:45 tonight.

JCN Invitational

Perry-Lecompton (3-5) will meet Oskaloosa (4-5) at 7:30 tonight at Winchester in a rematch of Tuesday’s game at Perry, which the Kaws won, 38-33.

“They got in early foul trouble with some of their better scorers, and that took them out of some of things they wanted to do,” first-year Perry-Lecompton coach Mark Armstrong said. “I’m excepting a better game this time.”

The Kaws were 2-19 last year, but Perry-Lecompton has posted back-to-back victories against Oskaloosa and Kansas City Piper.

“The girls are happy and excited,” Armstrong said. “They got the proverbial monkey of their back. It was unbelievable to them that they could win two in a row.”

Junior forward Megan Blosser leads P-L with an average of eight points per game.

In another JCN first-round game at Nortonville, McLouth (0-8) faces a rematch against Mount Academy at 7:30 tonight. The Bulldogs, in fact, already have played five of the other seven teams in the field. McLouth, which lost to Mount Academy, 65-26, Tuesday, faces a possible second-round — or consolation-round — game against Valley Falls, which handed the Bulldogs two of their eight losses.

“You know what to expect,” McLouth coach Vicki Bechard said, “but you get tired of playing the same people all the time.”

Erica Meyer and Leigh Anna Thompson lead McLouth with 6.0 and 5.9 points per game respectively.