Springfield-Montco eases by Upper Moreland for SOL American victory

SPRINGFIELD >> In the early going in Tuesday night’s Suburban One League American Conference girls basketball matchup between Springfield-Montco and Upper Moreland, it was a battle for buckets as the two teams combined for only nine points in the opening quarter.

For Upper Moreland, the struggle continued throughout the game, as it put up only 21 points for the contest as the Golden Bears were doubled up by the Spartans 42-21.

“You always want the offense to click right away but I think we’re still a spoke away from having a good wheel as far as moving the ball on offense,” Springfield coach Bill Krewson said. “Offensively I still think it’s a struggle (but) defensively I think we’re starting to play harder.”

In a game last week, Upper Moreland (3-4, 1-3 conference) had trouble handling the full-court pressure defense from Upper Dublin and Tuesday night, Springfield (3-5, 2-2) followed the same blue print, pressuring the Golden Bears into turning the ball over and not allowing them to get across midcourt easily.

“The first quarter we broke it very well,” Upper Moreland coach Ed Decker said. “All they did was take three more steps forward which caused us to do stupid things.”

When Upper Moreland was able to cross the ball across midcourt, it was plagued by poor shooting, something the Bears are going to have to live with as they are built to be a jump shooting team.

“Looking at the stats, we didn’t shoot the ball very well again,” Decker said. “We had one kid who was 2-for-13, (another) 1-for-8 and a couple missed layups here and there, but we haven’t been shooting the ball well for about two weeks right now.”

Defensively, the Bears did their homework, holding Springfield’s top option, Molly Dugan, to 16 points, but six of her points came late in the fourth quarter when the game was already decided. Upper Moreland also did a very good job stopping Springfield’s second option, Maura Ryan, who should have presented an issue for the Upper Moreland defense given her size, but the Bears did a solid job collapsing on her when she got the ball.

“I thought we did a great job on Ryan today,” Decker said. “I think when she got the ball in the post we collapsed pretty hard on her. I think we did a good job on Dugan today, too, but when you get in foul trouble we got to play tentative or we got to put kids in there who are not use to that pace.”

Early in the season, it was hard to tell which guard besides Dugan would emerge as a scoring threat and another double-digit point night from Grace Barraclough might be adding some clarity to that answer. A fearless shooter, Barraclough can launch from outside and is not afraid to put the ball on the floor. It should be interesting to see how the trajectory of Barraclough’s season will continue from this point forward as team should pay more attention to her as a shooter.