Sloppy play dooms Lansdale Catholic against West Catholic
LANSDALE >> The Lansdale Catholic girls basketball team was playing from behind for most of the game Friday night against West Catholic and made too many mistakes to mount a comeback.
The Crusaders dropped the Philadelphia Catholic League matchup, 68-57, at Lansdale Catholic High School.
The momentum took a big swing in the third quarter when the Crusaders trailed by seven. They had a 3-on-1 fast break and failed to score.
West scored at the other end, forced a turnover and scored again to make it an 11-point game. LC never got closer than seven the rest of the way.
Lansdale Catholic turned the ball over 21 times in the loss. West made the Crusaders pay for most of those mistakes by turning them into easy points at the other end.
“When you’re playing a school that maybe isn’t as athletic as West Catholic you can get away with stuff like that,” LC coach Eric Gidney said. “When you have a team like that that’s up and down the floor that obviously likes to play on the offensive side of the court a lot, you’re not going to get away with turning the ball over and making those mistakes. You have to value and appreciate every single possession. We didn’t do that.”
The Crusaders trailed by eight heading into the fourth quarter, but the Burrs weren’t going to let them narrow the gap. West’s Daziyhana Montgomery-Wilson hit two three-pointers on their first three possessions of the final frame and three in the quarter to keep her side comfortably ahead. She finished with six threes and a game-high 19 points.
“She hit six of them,” Gidney said. “In the beginning of the game we were so keyed on their post players and they were really keyed on getting the ball into the post. We really had a lot of help and I think we were effective in shutting down their post players. Then we got the post players in trouble and we never really rolled out of that strategy and applied more pressure on the guards.”
LC’s best stretch came at the beginning of the second quarter. They trailed, 19-16, after eight minutes, but started the second frame with an 8-0 run to take a 24-19 lead. Emily Smith hit a pair of threes early in the quarter and had 17 points before halftime. She didn’t score in the second half.
“They were in a box zone with one player on (Smith) everywhere she went,” Gidney said. “It worked, they obviously shut her out in the second half, but one thing that I’ve always been proud of with this team is we always seem to have a different player lead us in a different quarter. So when they keyed on Emily, Timaya (Lewis-Eutsey) and Riley (DeVitis) had good quarters. Then when they were still keyed on (Smith), Kristina Finkelston came in and had some good opportunities along with Riley still driving.
“Whatever they do on Emily, there’s no reason for us to turn the ball over. There’s no reason for us to let that girl hit six threes that game. They’re not related.”
Lewis-Eutsey finished with 15 points and DeVitis had 11.
