Warrior Girls Pull Away For 78-68 Win Over Colonels

Posted: January 28, 2015
By ROBERT NIEDZWIECKI
The Winchester Star

STEPHENS CITY — In their first meeting, the James Wood girls’ basketball team cranked up its defensive play in holding Sherando to 21 points in the last three quarters of a 58-48 win.

In their high-scoring rematch, Sherando wasn’t able to return the favor for nearly as long of a stretch. But just when it looked like James Wood might be getting into a rhythm, it was the Warriors’ play on defense that finally allowed them to take control.

Holding just a two-point lead heading into the fourth quarter thanks to a James Wood run, in the first five minutes of the fourth quarter the Warriors limited the Colonels to just 2-of-10 shooting and had three steals to open up a 13-point lead, and Sherando went on to a 78-68 victory in a Northwestern District and Conference 21 game Tuesday.

“Our defensive stops,” said Sherando coach Mike Marsh when asked what he liked most about a complete Warriors’ performance that featured a game-high 21 points from sophomore Davina Lane, who was averaging 5.9 points per game coming into Tuesday. “[James Wood] did a great job. Every time we started getting a little lead, three, four, six, eight points — they’d come back and tie it or get within two.

“We finally got seven or eight stops there [at the beginning of the fourth] to stretch things out a lot. We just played really good rotational defense, we got people where we needed to be to stop the drives. ... We finally figured out what we needed to do. That was good.”

After a 9-2 run capped by two free throws from James Wood’s Keiana Brooks (team-high 19 points, six assists, four steals) tied the game at 50, Sherando (9-7 overall, 3-2 Northwestern, 3-1 Conference 21) took a 52-50 lead into the fourth quarter after a Lane basket with 5.7 seconds left in the third quarter.

Sherando still only led 58-54 with 5:38 to go in the game, but at that point the Warriors’ execution in all phases helped them get separation.

Jess Hakel (20 points, 10 rebounds, four steals) found Lane cutting left to right through the lane with a bounce pass that she banked in to make it 60-54, one of numerous instances in which Sherando was able to get good looks at the basket through passes and cuts.

Audra Sites (eight points, 10 rebounds) then made one of her three steals and fired to Heidi Brown (17 points), who was already well on her way to the basket. Brown finished an easy layup to make it 62-54, and Sites made a steal on James Wood’s next possession that led to a Brown free throw on the other end.

Sherando then grabbed its first double-digit lead of the game when Hakel hit a free throw after being fouled while making a driving layup, and Brown followed with a 3-pointer to make it 69-56.

With Sherando hitting 9 of 12 free throws in the fourth quarter after hitting only 14 of 25 through three quarters, James Wood (11-5, 2-4, 2-2) did not get closer than nine points the rest of the way.

Defensively, Marsh also felt the Warriors did a better job with Colonels guard Dani Rizzari (12 points, nine assists), whose lefty-playing style gave the Warriors fits in the previous matchup. Marsh said Sherando brought up left-hander Amber Garrett from the JV team to a couple varsity practices to get a better feel for defending a lefty.

Overall, Hakel said the Warriors’ teamwork on defense was big.

“This time we were playing a lot of help defense, which stopped them from drives,” Hakel said. “That made the difference.”

An offensive explosion from Lane paid off too. The speedy Lane is usually more of a defensive contributor — she led the team with 3.4 steals per game coming into Tuesday — but in scoring 19 of her points through three quarters she was a driving force in keeping the Warriors in the lead.

“It was just like any other game — if I’m open, I shoot the ball, and if I can drive to the basket to the open spaces, I’ll do it,” Lane said. “Tonight, [my shots] were just falling.”

James Wood’s shots were not. The Colonels only made 25 of 67 shots (37 percent) and 2 of 13 3-pointers.

James Wood coach Krista Crites said Sherando used more triangle-and-two looks on Brooks and Rizzari than the Warriors did in the first matchup, which she felt contained the Colonels’ offense as a whole better than last time. And defensively, Crites said the number of foul calls made things difficult — the Warriors only attempted 15 free throws in the game on Jan. 16.

Overall, Crites feels her team is definitely capable of executing better than it did Tuesday.

“We were getting shots, we just weren’t making them,” Crites said. “We’re way better than what we played tonight. It’s a game of 32 minutes, and if you don’t play 32 minutes in this conference, you’re going to lose.

“We just didn’t play ball. We didn’t get up and down the court the way we normally do. That’s how it is. We just didn’t do it.”

James Wood was also led by Grace Greene (12 points, seven rebounds) and Sarah Johnson (10 points, eight rebounds).

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