Burke's sizzling shooting fuels Warriors to win over Colonels

WINCHESTER — Sherando girls’ basketball coach Brooklyn Wilson wanted to take Grace Burke off the floor in the second quarter on Thursday, but she couldn’t.

The senior guard was so hot from long distance and that it made it impossible for Wilson to give her a break.

Burke (23 total points) nailed five 3-pointers in the second quarter as she and her teammates turned a tie game into a dominating 35-17 halftime lead on the way to a 59-40 romp against James Wood in the Class 4 Northwestern District opener for both teams at Shirley Gymnasium.

Jaiden Polston added 14 points and spearheaded a defense that held Colonels’ standout Brynna Nesselrodt to eight points, more than 20 points under her season average entering the contest.

Burke sank her only three-point attempt in the first quarter, but she unleashed a barrage from long distance that hit nothing but twine and even drew a Michael Jordan-like shrug from her at one point.

“It feels great,” Burke said of the hot shooting. “Once you hit one or two in a row, you just get that feeling and that confidence that you’ll keep hitting them. The more you keep making them, the more you want to keep shooting them.”

With the score tied at 13 early in the second quarter, Burke swished a pair of 3-pointers in an 11-0 run that put the Warriors (3-0) ahead for good. She sank three more over the course of the final 2:45 in the quarter to complete the half with 18 points on 6-for-6 shooting.

“I was going to try to take her out and get her a rest, but you can’t do that when she’s shooting like that,” Wilson said.

“Grace Burke is the kind of player that if she hits one or two on you that you might want to look out because the next three may just fall,” James Wood coach Sanford Silver said. “Once she gets in that groove, it’s just a shooter’s choice. … We ran a box-and-one on her and she still got loose. She’s just an outstanding player.”

What made Burke’s streak more impressive was that she wasn’t just catching and shooting the ball. Multiple attempts came off the dribble, using Polston as a screen at the top of the key.

“I’ve definitely been working on that a lot and so has our team,” Burke said. “It’s being able to understand that I’m not going to be able to catch-and-shoot all of the time. Teams that are good like James Wood are going to be all up in your face and we have to find other ways to get open. We’ve been working on the screens and shooting, stuff like that.”

Led by transition slashes to the basket by Jolie Jenkins, James Wood (1-2) was able to keep things interesting. The Colonels sliced the lead to as low as 10 points (43-33) on a Jenkins transition basket with 5:22 left.

“I think Jolie Jenkins proved in transition that she is a playmaker and she’s an athlete,” Silver said of the sophomore, who scored a career-high 17 points. “She just exploded to the rim.”

But after being held scoreless in the third quarter, Burke had a pull-up baseline jumper and finished the night 7 of 9 from long distance with another bomb to make it 48-33 with 4:10 left. The Warriors’ lead grew as high as 59-37 on Aliza Murray’s 3-pointer with 20 seconds remaining.

Nesselrodt had scored 57 points in the Colonels' first two games, but the Warriors made a concerted effort to limit the senior standout's touches and doubled down when she had the ball.

Polston, the primary defender, and Josie Willett shared the defensive duties against Nesselrodt. “It’s very obvious Brynna is an incredible player,” Wilson said. “You can tell in warm-ups and other games that she has been working on her game this year. She’s a really hard player to defend. She can shoot from outside and she can post you up.”

Silver said Thursday’s matchup provided a good object lesson for Nesselrodt and her teammates.

“I think she is going to learn from it,” Silver said. “Our young players have got to get a screen to set up the offensive player out of a box-and-one to take care of that.”

Murray, a freshman, scored in double figures for the third consecutive game with 10 points. Polston grabbed eight rebounds, while Asia Williams and Burke each had three assists.

Nayah Edwards added six points and Josie Russell had seven rebounds for the Colonels.

Three games into the season, Wilson is liking what she is seeing from her squad, one season removed from a state quarterfinal berth. The Warriors won the Hampshire (W.Va.) tournament to open the campaign.

“Not getting a scrimmage made us a little nervous going into our first two games,” she said. “I thought we did a great job up at Hampshire. Obviously an in-town rival and we have some of that history, getting a win against a really skilled team helps as well.”

“I think it’s really high,” Burke said when asked about the Warriors’ confidence level. “I think it’s at an all-time high, even with last year going to states. We have a really good team bond and we just feed off of each other’s energy. We know what we’re capable of and feed off of that.”

Silver likes what he sees from his young team, too.

“I think resiliency and toughness, they showed that they’ve got it,” he said. “Lack of experience can put you in a bad situation, but you can’t complain. The kids played hard for us.”

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