Calvary Baptist shuts down Coventry
Stifling defense turned into a whole lot of offense for the Calvary Baptist girls basketball team Tuesday night, as the Warriors rolled to a 53-5 win over visiting Coventry Christian to improve to a perfect 6-0 in conference play.
The win sets up a showdown at High Point on Friday night in a battle of the last two unbeatens in the Atlantic Coast Christian Athletic Conference.
Calvary forced one turnover after another on Tuesday, setting up several fast breaks that led to a 34-0 lead by halftime.
“That’s our forte,” Warriors coach Scott Bergey said. “Rebounding, defense, and then the fast break. The girls played well. Our defense definitely sets up our offense, and we have five starters this year who each have hit for double digits multiple times.”
Brandice Clemens led the way on this night, as the speedy guard was busy on defense and kept getting to the basket for a game-high 14 points. Vicky Castelli scored 10 and Sierra Gueast was big under the basket, adding nine.
“We’re a very well-balanced scoring team and you could see that tonight,” Bergey said.
“We all have our different sets of skills,” said Castelli.
The Warriors (7-3 overall and 6-0 in the ACCAC) had everything working in this one, and simply overwhelmed Coventry (0-10).
“We had a lot of steals, more than we anticipated,” Castelli said.
Calvary’s defense was so relentless that the Eagles were held scoreless until 4 minutes, 11 seconds remained in the third quarter, when MaryKate Niehls scored on a rebound to break the shutout for Coventry.
Now, Calvary gets ready for its biggest test of the year thus far, in a possible preview of the ACCAC Final.
“It’s always a war,” Bergey said of the games with High Point. “We beat them both times last year and the one time was by three points, the other by four points. We graduated a couple seniors and they didn’t, and it’s at their place so it’s going to be a battle.”
“So excited,” Castelli said. “We’re ready to beat them and be the only undefeated team in the conference.”