CB East eases past Lansdale Catholic

LANSDALE >> The Lansdale Catholic girls basketball team would have needed to have played a near-flawless game in order to hang with Central Bucks East Thursday night.

A slow start found the Crusaders in a 10-point hole just under two and half minutes into the game. Had LC not started as slow it might have just prolong the inevitable as the Patriots use their quick start to carry the momentum all the way to a 60-23 non-league win.

“CB East is very good team, they’re well-coached, they got a lot of athletes but I was confident coming in,” Lansdale Catholic coach Joe Mack said. “I thought we matched up fairly well against them.”

Perhaps feeling a little rattled from the very early double digit deficit LC couldn’t come up with a stop or a basket to stop the bleeding when it need it.

“We got off to a slow start,” Mack said. “(We) turned the ball over. We looked a little tentative, especially in the first quarter. We dug ourselves a hole and obviously never got out of it.”

Defensively, the Crusaders tried several different schemes in order to slow down the potent CB East offensive attack. The effort was there from LC but it couldn’t consistently stop the Patriots from getting the looks it liked in close or keep them off the free throw line.

“The plan was to mix it up between man and zone,” Mack said. “They hit a few shots in the beginning so we looked to go man a little bit more but I got to do a better job of getting these kids to play better man to man.”

Offensively, the Crusaders had a few player that could actually combat the size presence that CB East had. Kim Talley was a force on the glass for the Crusaders, but could not convert her good looks on the offensive end into points but she remained aggressive throughout the game.

“Kim played with a lot of energy and you could see she was very driven on the court,” Mack said. “She got some shot there that she usually puts in. It’s one of those nights where if she misses one it just continues.”

With the Philadelphia Catholic League schedule looming, the Crusaders will take the positives from playing the talented CB East and apply them to league schedule upcoming.

“You can only take positives and you can only see what we can improve on,” Mack said. “CB East is a very good team and we want to play them for a reason, to get us ready for the Catholic League.”