Pioneers nip Mounts
- 28 December 2010
After the fact, the bewilderment, frustration and disappointment were all evident on Mike Garman's face Monday night."I wish there was a magical answer, but there's not," Ephrata's girls' basketball coach said. "The girls just have to learn to win games. I guess you just keep trying to get better."
Considering his team is going through the same type of learning processes this year, Lampeter-Strasburg coach Matt Wieand can relate.
Wieand, though, has been able to get results thus far.
After losing track of the 47-41 lead it held with 1:38 left to play, L-S did what was necessary down the stretch to hold off Ephrata, 47-46, in the first round of the Ephrata Holiday Tournament.
"We expected a tough game," Wieand said afterward. "But we played as a team and got a lot of key contributions from different people. Throughout the game we didn't let Ephrata get us down and we kept making plays."
In short, that's how you win games.
As L-S learned again Monday in a game that featured six lead changes and five ties.
In fact, after building a fragile 25-24 lead at the break, the Pioneers trailed for virtually the entire third quarter and didn't retake the lead until Lindsey Stoltzfus scored on a putback to make it 41-39 with 6:42 left to play.
And when forward Lexie Lantz (10 points) scored off a feed by Kelsey Souders (game-high 19) to make it 47-41 with 1:38 left, L-S appeared to be safe.
Not the case.
Ephrata's Kat Andriani (14 points) knocked down a 3-pointer from the left wing with 1:13 to go that cut the lead to three, before Kristy Lieble (team-high 15 points) picked Souders' pocket at the top of the key and scored on the break to make it 47-46 with 39 seconds left.
But despite forcing an L-S turnover with 15 seconds left on the Pioneers' ensuing trip, the Mounts turned it over themselves with five seconds remaining, allowing L-S to run out the clock.
And for Ephrata, which lost by five points or less for the fifth time this season, the learning process continues.
"The game's we're playing are one-, two- and three-point games," Garman said. "But when you get in a situation where you're not winning those games it gets old."
We here at www.ephratamounts.com are proud sponsors of the Dodgeball for Diabetes tournament.