Sharing is caring for Burley-Chambers, TCA
NEWTOWN SQUARE >> There are some games when The Christian Academy’s Dejah Burley-Chambers knows she has to shoulder a sizeable scoring burden. There are others where she’d prefer to be the facilitator.
Friday afternoon, against the 2-3 zone defense of Friends’ Select in a District 1/12 Class A sub-regional first round game, Burley-Chambers saw the chance to sit in the hole in the middle of the Falcons’ zone. Her ability to draw defenders and dish to teammates cutting around her made the difference.
Burley-Chambers scored six points and dished a team-high five assists to spark a 48-25 win.
“Whatever the open door is, I just take it,” Burley-Chambers said. “If I have to score, I’ll score. If I have to share, I can share it. But both are important.”
Dejah Burley-Chambers off glass and in. At the half, @TCACru leads Friends Select 22-14. pic.twitter.com/8FHyhzZtSH
— Matthew De George (@sportsdoctormd) February 23, 2018
Burley-Chambers and fellow forward Britney Dike alternated flashing to the elbow to receive passes in the zone’s soft spot. Burley-Chambers in particular showed a knack for spreading the wealth, and when she and Dike both were active in displacing defenders, TCA created easy offense.
“Just go to ball-fake, look for the ball, look for who’s open and just see my teammates,” Burley-Chambers said. “I know they can score so I pass them the ball if they have the better opportunity than me. Why not pass the ball? I can score but I can share it too.”
“We practiced our offense against that exact defense,” Hannah Sareyka said. “We had Dejah and Britney start at the block and flash up, which had them off guard and had our girls up, so we had it wide open.”
Sareyka led TCA with 14 points. Dike added 12 and Grace Gormley had 10 points. It eased the sting of limited production from Lindsay Haseltine, who struggled through first-half foul trouble and contributed just four points.
TCA also got a boost from its defense, creating 25 turnovers, and Haseltine was a primary source in that effort.
“Going to man-to-man, it was supposed to force them into turnovers,” Sareyka said. “Grace was marking their best ball-handler, and I was on (Anna Sieg) and we were trying to force them back and make them pass to their big man and trapping them.”
Sieg was the only offensive weapon working for Friends’ Select, scoring 16 of their points, including nine in second quarter. Camryn Harvie provided six points.
TCA held Friends’ Select to just two points in the first and third quarters. The Crusaders finished the third quarter on a 9-0 run to open up what had been a six-point game. An 11-0 spurt in the fourth put it all away, booking TCA’s trip to top-seeded Jenkintown March 3, the winner going to states, the loser guaranteed a chance to play back for a third states berth.
In the Class A boys tournament:
Phil-Mont Christian 51, Christian Academy 48 >> Tehron Phillips scored 19 points to go with six assists and four steals, and Sam Geathers added 13 points, but the Crusaders (10-14) couldn’t get all the way back from a 17-point deficit after scoring just eight first-half points. TCA got within two after three quarters but couldn’t get all the way back.
