‘A Team’ shows up for Springbrook against Blake

Girls basketball: Springbrook 56, Blake 37

It was a relative offensive explosion for normally defensive-minded Springbrook, who hadn’t reach the 50-point plateau in each of their previous four victories. On Thursday, they managed just 32 against the Warriors.

But after going scoreless for the first 4 1⁄2 minutes of the game, the Blue Devils scored 21 of the game’s next 23 points, all in an eight-minute stretch.

‘‘This was a huge win because last night, we didn’t have any offense whatsoever,” said Springbrook head coach Oliver Riggs. ‘‘You can’t come in and play at a halfway pace against a team of Blake’s caliber, and we started out looking like we did last night. But we made up for it — I was wondering which team would show up tonight, and it was the ‘A team.’”

Even Mr. T would have been proud of the outstanding performance by point guard Taryn Christian. The Blue Devils’ finest all-around player put together a near-flawless effort, scoring 25 points to go along with six rebounds, four assists and four steals. More importantly, she didn’t turn the ball over once.

In fact it was Christian who helped Springbrook shake off the doldrums of a rough start. The Bengals jumped off to a 6-0 lead after a three-pointer by guard Christine Weithman, a free throw by guard Danielle Luckett, and a driving layup by the team’s leading scorer, Molly Wannen.

But from that point on it was all Springbrook, all the time. Christian, normally more of a slasher than sharpshooter, hit three first-half three-pointers. She got much needed inside help from center Wilize Maleombho, who scored seven of her nine points in the first quarter. And guard Tieyara Jones came off the bench to score six first-half points as well, staking the Blue Devils to a five-point halftime lead.

They ran away with it in the second half, with Christian pouring in 14 of her 25 after intermission. A corner three at the third-period buzzer by guard Melisa Corado-Williams pushed the lead to 15, and the game was never in doubt after that.

‘‘We kind of wanted to redeem ourselves from yesterday, because it was a rough game,” said Christian. ‘‘It was kind of like we came out sleeping — we didn’t run any offense at all, we just couldn’t put any points on the board, and we didn’t play very good defense. So tonight we wanted to keep the tempo up and keep pushing.”

While the victory was Springbrook’s fifth straight, it also ended Blake’s five-game winning streak. Normally an up-tempo team, the Bengals had scored no less than 61 points during the stretch, which included victories against Blair, Sherwood, Whitman, Churchill and Magruder.

But the points were scarce on Friday. Only Luckett reached double-digits, with 13, and Wannen managed just nine. After a tightly-contested first half, the Bengals were outscored 30-16 in the third and fourth quarters.

‘‘We just did not play well at all,” said Blake coach Patti Gilmore. ‘‘But you’ve got to give credit, especially to Taryn Christian. Taryn — I truly believe that she’s the best senior in Montgomery County. I think she’s the real deal and I’m actually very surprised she hasn’t been more heavily recruited. I see her as really having a lot of the ingredients that you would want at the next level.”