Lady Devils Down LP
Don Baldin- News Trib
January 18, 2010
Hall girls fast out of the gate
Monday, January 18, 2010
By Don Baldin
At Saturday afternoon’s matinee between two local teams in an NCIC crossover match-up, the Hall Lady Red Devils jumped out to a 10-0 first-quarter lead on their way to a 39-34 win over La Salle-Peru.
“This was a big win for us,” Hall head coach Dave Kain said. “We have been playing well but had lost nine or 10 in a row, so we are really excited about winning. And to beat a quality team like L-P is a great win for us. We are all really happy.”
The game could not have started better for the Lady Red Devils, nor worse for the Lady Cavaliers as Hall’s Allison Pelka hit a jumper at the 6-minute, 45-second mark of the opening period and gave the home team a 2-0 lead.
Over the next 3 minutes neither team was able to score until Hall’s Claire Faletti rolled in a layup at the 3-minute mark, and soon after, Christina Richardson followed with a lay-in of her own and the Lady Red Devil lead grew to 6-0.
Hall finished the period strong when Kelle Nett dropped in a layup and Jaclyn Kain hit a jumper to close the quarter with Hall holding a 10-0 advantage.
“We came out slow,” La Salle-Peru head coach Hollis Vickery said. “We are a young team and after a busy week and a Saturday afternoon game, maybe that had something to do with it. But give Hall credit, they came ready to play. They played well and Dave (Kain) had a good defensive scheme. In the second period, we played much better, but we couldn’t sustain it in the second half.”
The second period started much better for the Cavs as Sheila Klieber got the Lady Cavaliers (4-13) on the board with a pull-up jumper, and Ellen Renk followed that up with a steal and a layup to get L-P back in the game.
Hall responded with a Karly Hoscheid layup and a 3-point bomb from deep in the corner from Liz Mosbach. Then Nett buried a layup to balloon the Lady Red Devil advantage to 17-4 with four minutes left in the first half.
Just as things seemed to be getting out of hand, the Lady Cavaliers came storming back, first with an Erin Senica jumper and then a long 3-pointer from Jennie Laio to inch the Lady Cavaliers closer at 17-9 with three minutes left in the second quarter.
The Cavaliers continued to roll when Renk converted another steal into a layup to make the score 17-11. Hall got a pair of Mosbach free throws before the Lady Cavs closed the half with a pair of 3-point bombs, one each by Laio and Micky Fassino, to tighten the Hall lead at 19-17 heading to the locker rooms.
The Red Devils kept their composure and came out with a vengeance when Faletti rattled in a layup and Mosbach followed with a lay-in of her own before Nett connected on a short jumper to suddenly put Hall back in front, 25-19.
La Salle-Peru’s Klieber answered with a bucket to trim the Hall lead to 25-19, but Nett again found the net with a jumper to put the difference at 27-19 with a minute and a half left in the third period.
The Lady Cavaliers notched the final two points of the quarter on a Renk layup, and the game moved along to the final period with the Lady Red Devils holding a 27-21 advantage.
The fourth period started with Richardson turning a steal into two points for the Lady Devils.
“Christina really played well for us down the stretch and got a couple of steals and turned them into layups,” Kain said. “We haven’t had many fast-break points this year so they were good to see.”
The Lady Red Devils continued to roll with a Nett jumper before L-P got things back on track with a Marge Johnson free throw and a 3-pointer from the corner by Klieber to cut the Lady Devil lead back to 31-25 with a half of a period left to play.
The Red Devils’ Faletti then buried a jump shot and Richardson added a pair of free throws to push the Hall lead to 10 with 3:21 left in regulation. L-P again battled back with a Fassino jumper and a Senica free throw, but again Richardson came up with a steal and a layup to keep the Hall lead at nine.
L-P got a little closer on a Klieber putback, but Richardson answered once more with a layup and Hall’s lead went to nine with 50.5 left to play. The Lady Cavaliers would show no signs of quitting and used three free throws from Renk and one from Senica to score the last four points of the game, but it would not be enough.“We knew one thing when the game was coming to an end and that is that L-P won’t quit,” Kain said. “We had scouted them so we expected them to play hard all the way to the end and they did.”
Vickery agreed about the fight in his team.
“We fought to the end, but most of the game we were out rebounded and didn’t play aggressive,” Vickery said. “Against Ottawa and the last 50 seconds of (Saturday’s) game we were like a bunch of piranhas on dead fish, real aggressive and that is how we need to play.”
