Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008
The Springbrook girls basketball team didn’t look like a team that had won five of their previous six games entering last Friday night’s match-up with Blair. Through 16 minutes, you could have never imagined that it could win games, period. The coup de grace of a nightmare first-half was when sophomore forward Sunny Conway got called for a technical foul with 0.4 seconds to go, and the Blazers’ two ensuing free throws sent the Blue Devils into the locker room with an eight-point deficit.
Something wasn’t right.
‘‘Coach [Oliver] Riggs got on us badly,” said Conway. ‘‘He’s like, if we don’t keep get our composure, we’re going to lose this game. And we don’t lose games.”
Riggs was right.
The Blue Devils retook the lead within the first four minutes of the quarter, with fast-break layup after fast-break layup, and hung on for a 49-43 victory over the Blazers to complete a season’s sweep. Three weeks ago, the Blue Devils (8-5 overall, 5-1 4A East Division) won, 41-34, at Blair.
‘‘We came out and we did our thing,” said Conway, who scored 15 points. ‘‘We calmed ourselves down, especially me because I got the tech.”
Through two quarters, it was the Blazers (3-8, 1-5) who were doing their thing. Playing without junior guard Jenny Williams, the team’s leading scorer who was suspended for breaking team rules, Blair still managed to completely take over the game in the second quarter. Point guard Kalisha Holmes did much of the damage, scoring 10 of her team-high 14 points, but the big difference-maker seemed to be forward Ashley Arnold. Though only around 5-foot-8, Arnold dominated the backboards, finishing with 12 of her 18 points by intermission. And it was her two free throws that gave the Blazers a 27-19 lead at halftime.
‘‘We kind of win and lose with Ashley, I feel like,” said Blair head coach Erin Conley. ‘‘She really did a good job. I thought we played very well and gave ourselves an opportunity to win at the end. But we shot a poor percentage in the second-half and you know, we’re not the best shooters in the world.”
Of course Williams, who hit five 3-pointers in the teams’ first match-up, could have solved that problem. But the real reason that the Blazers couldn’t hold the lead was a wrinkle thrown in by Riggs at halftime. He decided to go to a match-up zone, which the Blue Devils didn’t use at all in the first half, to begin the third quarter.
It worked like a charm. They immediately reeled off five points, all by guard Ferin Richardson (15 points), thanks to some relentless pressure. They had eight steals in the quarter alone, matched the 19 points they’d scored in the entire first half alone, and took a four-point lead into the fourth quarter that they would never lose.
‘‘When we went to that zone, we got three or four turnovers real quick, and turned that [eight]-point deficit into a tie game like, immediately,” said Riggs. ‘‘I mean, they were out-hustling us and out-muscling us in the first half and I felt we did that to them in the second half. From switching that defense and getting those steals we were able to get all those layups, and that’s what really won us the game.”
His ‘‘pep” talk may have had something to do with it, too.
‘‘I told them, ‘If you’re going to cry and complain about the officials not making the calls, let me know and we can forfeit right now.’ But you know what? They showed me in the second half they have a lot of heart. And I wouldn’t have any of my teams without it.”
