Lady Mounts drop Buckskins
- 10 January 2009
The Lancaster-Lebanon League girls’ basketball Section 2 predictions hit the World Wide Web on Thursday, December 4, the day before the first game this season.1. Garden Spot, 2. Lebanon, 3. Conestoga Valley, 4. Ephrata
“As soon as we saw that, we knew we were the underdogs,” Ephrata’s Mel Andrew said. “We wanted to prove everyone wrong.”And that’s exactly what the Mountaineers did in the first half of the league season, which concluded Friday night for Ephrata at Conestoga Valley, where the Mounts earned a hard-fought 40-34 victory over the Buckskins.
After the first go-round of five section games and three crossovers against Section 1 foes, Ephrata sits atop the Section 2 heap with a 6-2 mark – a game ahead of Solanco, which improved to 5-3 in league games with a 76-46 rout over Garden Spot on Friday.
“It’s great,” Ephrata coach Mike Garman said after the win at CV. “The kids have worked really hard for this. We’re trying to take it a game at a time and we’re trying to just keep improving. It’s been a total team effort. That’s been the biggest thing. The kids really believe in each other.”
Ephrata won’t wow you with an up-tempo attack or a stifling full-court defense.
What the Mounts do – quite well – is play solid half-court defense, get on the glass, maximum their possessions and seemingly always get a good shot … even if it takes some serious time off the clock.
“The thing that impresses me is how the kids are finding ways to win these games,” Garman said. “It’s not always pretty. It’s not flashy. But the kids are working together and they’re finding ways to get the job done.”
Take Friday for example.
Forward Alison Weaver, who has been one of the most underrated post players in the league this season, was ill, but she stuck it out and played most of the game. With her hurting in the post, Andrew stepped up on the glass and grabbed 8 rebounds.
And in the fourth quarter, when CV had several chances to either tie the game or make it a one-possession game, Ephrata turned the pressure up a notch on defense in the half-court, forcing the Buckskins to turn the ball over 10 excruciating times in the final eight minutes – which was a crusher for CV.
“Our big thing is team defense,” said Ephrata’s Aly Goodman, who hit four 3-pointers and scored a game-high 17 points. “Our offense isn’t the strongest, and we know that. But we’re not beating teams with our offense. We’re beating teams with our team defense.”
CV (1-7, 2-12) found that out the hard way Friday.
“Coach Garman always tells us that our best defense is when we have the ball on offense,” said Andrew, who chipped in with 6 points. “We don’t like to rush and throw up the first shot that’s open. We like to pass the ball around, get a layup or get fouled or just get the best shot available. We don’t need to score 50-60 points a game.”
And Ephrata hasn’t.
The big thing for the Mounts is that they’re not allowing 50-60 points a game, meaning they’ve done an excellent job forcing their opponents to play at their pace. Maddening? Yes. Effective? You betcha.
And here they are all alone in first place after the first half.
“Ephrata is well coached, they hustle and they all play hard,” CV coach Jerry Beekler said. “Give them credit. They’re much improved.”
CV certainly had its chances against Ephrata. The Bucks trailed 15-10 after the first quarter, but used a 10-7 clip in the second quarter and trailed by just 22-20 at the break and by 31-28 heading into the fourth quarter.
The Bucks had a shot to tie the game twice midway through the fourth, but CV kept turning the ball over. Ephrata capitalized, with Andrew and Kat Andriani both hitting key buckets in the lane and Jan Woolley went 4-for-4 at the foul line in the waning seconds to ice it.
Janelle Frey and Jess Martin scored 13 points apiece for CV, which won the rebounding battle, 38-26. But those 10 fourth-quarter turnovers were a killer.
Kirsten Madonna grabbed 12 boards and Frey and Rachel Bjorkman had eight rebounds each for CV, which is hoping it can somehow, some way get back in the race with eight league games to go.
“I still say the section race is wide open,” Beekler said. “Ephrata and Solanco are the top teams right now, and you definitely have to keep track of what they’re doing. They seem to be the two most solid teams right now for sure. But who knows? Now we go back to the crossover games, and maybe somebody stumbles and everyone gets back into this.
“In the crazy world of Section 2 and crossover games, who knows? Going into the last three crossovers, we’re all going to get thrown into the mix again, and whatever gets spit out … you look at your last five section games and you can get a better gauge on things.”
According to the gauge at the midway point, Ephrata is alone in first, followed by Solanco, which is alone in second.
For the record, Solanco was picked to finish fifth out of six teams in Section 2, so the teams picked to finish fourth and fifth are currently hogging up the top of the section charts – and proving a lot of people wrong.
“We’re tying not to worry about Solanco,” Andrew said. “We want to do our jobs and win our games and not worry about what everyone else is doing.”
By the way, Solanco topped Ephrata 55-51 on Dec. 23.
“Mel said it best in the locker room after the game,” Garman said. “She told everyone that all we can control is what we’re doing. We can’t be worrying about what other teams are doing. We have to keep getting better and keep taking it one game at a time. We’ll concentrate on who is next, and then go from there.”
Up next for Ephrata is a crossover date Tuesday at Cedar Crest, which was unceremoniously bounced from sole possession of first place on Friday when Penn Manor knocked off the Falcons.
Ephrata and Solanco … believe it.
We here at www.ephratamounts.com are proud sponsors of the Dodgeball for Diabetes tournament.