PEMBERVILLE — Eastwood girls basketball coach Brittany Butler is fortunate to have multiple standout soccer players on her roster — in soccer they do a lot of running and know how to defend passing lanes.

In a Northern Buckeye Conference showdown Tuesday, the Eagles had 18 first half steals on their way to a 57-50 win over Fostoria.

“They are very aggressive,” Butler said. “It’s very helpful to have multi-sport athletes. Our kids did such a good job of being aggressive and getting in the lanes.”

Eastwood, 5-1 overall, stays unbeaten in the NBC at 4-0, while they hand Fostoria (3-4, 3-1) their first league loss.

Eastwood’s top two scorers, senior Amelia Ward with 24 points and two steals, and senior Kayla Buehler, with 19 points, four assists and four steals, were both standouts leading the Eagles’ soccer team to its sixth straight league title last fall.

“It helps a lot because we are in shape and we are ready to go, so we can run up and down the court and not get tired, which helps with the flow of both the offense and defense, which flows together,” Ward said.

“It’s just being super aggressive. We work on our 32 (3-2 zone) and our man-to-man defense every day and just being in the passing lanes is a super big deal for us, so it was a good team defensive effort tonight,” Ward continued.

“We really want to be aggressive with our speed and our transition, so getting in passing lanes, grabbing balls and getting steals are something we really put our mind to.”

Ward also connected on four three-point shots, and the Eagles shot 41% (23-for-56) from the floor, getting 11 more shots than Fostoria even though the Redmen outrebounded the Eagles, 38-22.

That’s because of the turnover margin — 26 for Fostoria, 14 for Eastwood. All but two of Fostoria’s turnovers were steals by the Eastwood defense, nearly all leading to points in transition. When the Redmen did get a shot off, it went well, as they connected on 23-of-45 field goals (51%).

Eastwood senior Saylor King, also a soccer standout, had four points and a team-high seven steals, including five thefts in the first half.

“Saylor King got after it defensively,” Butler said. “Our defense, it sparked us offensively. We transitioned really well.”

Eastwood senior Paige Hoodlebrink had four points, six steals and 10 rebounds, sophomore Piper Sutton scored four points, junior Jordan Jensen scored two points, and junior Kyrie Henline, even though she did not score, had five steals.

“I have to give hats off to our kids — they shared the ball so well,” Butler said. “They moved it so well, in and out. They knew Amelia Ward was hitting. They found her. Kayla Buehler did an outstanding job of splitting the defense and getting to the rim.

“Everybody just stepped up huge tonight. Paige Hoodlebrink got 10 on the boards. That was the most unselfish I’ve seen us play and we just played with a level of confidence.”

Fostoria junior power forward Lyrique Johnson led all scorers with a double-double 28 points and 13 rebounds. When Fostoria got the ball in the paint, she was hard to stop.

“I’ll give Fostoria credit — Johnson is a really nice kid — she works really hard,” Butler said. “Our kids said we’re not going to back down from the fight and we’re going to go out there and do what we can and they did.”

Fostoria junior forward Jatasia Jones had eight points, five rebounds and two steals and junior guard Brooklyn Holman had seven points and three steals.

Senior forward Karma Williams had three points, eight rebounds and three steals, junior guard Chazlyn Titus scored three points, and junior point guard Amijah Poole added one point.

“That was a phenomenal effort on both sides,” Fostoria coach Derek Angelone said. “It felt like that game was hard fought and played tough.

“Eastwood does a really good job of getting out and running. That hurt us tonight because they came out and ran and ran. I think our girls gave great effort at times and we did do a lot of great things tonight,” Angelone continued.

“We didn’t do enough of them down the stretch. We would have loved to see some balls roll our way there toward the end and that didn’t happen but we don’t like to make excuses ever.

“We know that we are tough enough to play with anybody around here. Even thought it wasn’t our way tonight we are going to try and come back and get one from them the next time we play them at home.”

Angelone says this shows how tough it can be to win in the NBC.

“We know how much the league has improved,” Angelone said. “The addition of Maumee and Oak Harbor has made it a little bit tougher but generally around the league everybody knows how much the rest of the league has improved.”