Mars holds off Gators
made just 3 of 16 (18.8 percent) in the first quarter and only 7 of 31 (22.6 percent) before intermission, which was a major reason why the Planets led, 24-18, at the break.
“It was just a lot of things and I don’t think that we were playing as together as we normally do and we didn’t come in focusing the way we should have been,” Gateway sophomore Lexi Jackson said. “A whole bunch of things are going through my mind and I just know that we’re going to come back next year even better and I don’t [think] that there’s anything I should hang my head about because I played a good game and my team played a good game and we’ll just move on to the next one.”
Jackson, a 6-foot-3 center, had moments where she was virtually unstoppable. She scored all eight of her team’s points in the first quarter and finished with 16 to go along with 19 rebounds.
“We couldn’t match her heightand we knew coming in that they were going to try to get the ball down low and take advantage of their height, so we wanted to double-team them and push them out a little bit” Mars senior forward Lauren Wasylson said. “Coming in, the first couple minutes of the game, I had some shots that I kind of pushed because I thought she was going to be on me because of the big wingspan and thought I would get blocked, but I just had to get that out of my mind.”
Though Mars led throughout much of the game — the Planets took their first lead on a Bella Pelaia 3-pointer with 3:29 left in the first quarter and never trailed again — Gateway did have a few runs and several opportunities to regain the advantage. After trailing by as many as 11 (2918) in the third quarter, the Gators went on a 12-2 run, keyed by five points from Jackson that cut the lead to 3130 with 3:14 left in the period.
That was as close as Gateway got, however, as Mars went on an 11-2 tear. To make sure, the Planets went into a delay with 4:33 left in the game and ran 1:06 off the clock to limit a potential Gators comeback.
“It really wasn’t a delay and I didn’t call a delay, but I just told them to be patient and [Jackson] was going to be sitting there and you’re not going get layups … and they did it and it was them,” Petruska said.