From a purist’s point of view, even Ross girls basketball coach Rodney Parrett had to admit that the Rams’ 29-14 non-conference, season-opening win over Goshen on Tuesday at Ross was no thing of beauty.

Compared to Ross’ home opener last season, though — a 55-22 loss to Hamilton — Tuesday’s game was pretty enough to hang in the Louvre.

“What I get out of it is it’s a win in our home opener,” Parrett said after the game. “It wasn’t the best 32 minutes we’ll play. I told the girls we’re better than that. We’ve got to score points; but last year, we got beat by (33).”

Senior forward Abby Walters and 6-foot freshman center Katie Brehm each scored six points to lead the Rams, who used an aggressive, 2-3 trapping zone defense to force 22 Warrior turnovers while holding them scoreless in the second quarter and for all but the final two seconds of the third quarter.

Parrett, who has only two seniors on his roster, expects to rely on the zone this year to avoid foul trouble.

“We’re young,” he said. “At one point, I had a junior, a freshman and three sophomores on the floor, so this was a great positive look for us. We’re looking good in the zone this year. I’m not normally a zone guy, but we looked good in it in our last scrimmage, so we figured we’d pick something and get really good at it.

“They were trapping instinctively, which is a good thing.”

The Rams never trailed after Brehm connected on a short jumper in the lane to snap a 2-2 tie with 5:41 left in the first quarter. They led by as many as 18, 29-11, after sophomore Sarah Merrill sank two free throws with 1:03 left in the game.

Ross now embarks on a five-game road trip, starting with a Southwest Ohio Conference matchup with Northwest on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. The stretch includes visits to Hamilton next Wednesday and to Edgewood for another SWOC tussle next Saturday.

“Northwest just beat Finneytown by (32) points,” Parrett said. “Nobody’s going to give us anything because we’re young. We’ve got to come ready to play.”