Mount downs Woonsocket
Woonsocket shows signs of improvement in defeat
The Mount St. Charles Academy girls basketball dominated the Woonsocket Lady Novans 53-32 on Wednesday afternoon during the Rhode Island Girls Basketball Holiday Classic.
Riley Sprague led Mount with 16 points. “Riley had some really nice moments in this game where she read the help side and she got to the rim and I thought as the game progressed, she got better,” Mount coach Christina Batastini said. “She was putting the ball on the floor well and started to understand the seams as the game went on. And when you see improvement within a game itself, it’s pretty impressive.”
Second in scoring for the Mounties was senior wing Katie Lynch, who chipped in 11 points.
“Katie does almost everything for us,” Batastini explained. “She’s our vocal leader. She plays very good defense. I thought she saw the floor well today. She had a good floor game. So, not only did she provide us with points, but I thought her passing was excellent. She got a lot of her teammates involved.”
Peyton Cahill led Woonsocket with seven points, while Tianna Carpentier and Taylor Tempest had five points apiece.
“I think this was the best game our girls played all year,” Woonsocket coach Mike Cahill said. “We need to put some more shots in the hoop, but I thought we played pretty well.
“I saw a lot of positives. If we were to play like that our two league games, we’d be 2-0 rather than 0-2. A lot of hustle. Defense was good. We went man-man the whole game, so maybe I’m going to stick with that. But, if we play like this, we’ll be okay.”
Mount scored the first seven points of the contest, all at the charity stripe. Woonsocket got on the scoreboard when Cahill buried a baseline jumper and made it 7-2.
Then, with 6:17 remaining in the half, Mount’s Sprague scored a 3-point play the old-fashioned way and increased the Lady Mounties advantage to 11-2.
Sprague made a free throw, two and a half minutes after that to give Mount its largest lead of the first half at 11.
With 1:26 remaining in the half, Cahill made a jumper and then Carpentier buried a 3-pointer and that pulled the Lady Novans within 17-11.
The Lady Mounties went into halftime with an eight point edge.
Mount went on an 11-1 run to start the second half and jumped out to a 30-12 advantage.
Woonsocket put an end to that spurt when Erinee Agyemang made a breakaway layup and got the Lady Novans within 30-14.
A couple of minutes later, Mount got a jumper from Lynch, a layup from Nicole Lemos, and a putback from Katie Mahon and built a 37-17 cushion with nine minutes remaining, and the Lady Mounties coasted from there.