Notre Dame girls win in spite of thin bench
Jason Hill is having to find a delicate balance right now with his Notre Dame High School girls’ basketball team.
Three starters the coach was counting on are gone for the season — two due to injury; the other moved away — leaving a limited number of minutes available off the bench. It’s a manageable situation for Hill when games are spread out, but tournaments are a different story.
The Lady Fighting Irish opened play in the Times Free Press Best of Preps tournament at Chattanooga State on Thursday with a 41-36 win over Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe, the event’s champion the past two years. This is Notre Dame’s second tournament in just more than a week, and though the win was far from pretty, it helped prove to Hill his shorthanded team isn’t backing down.
“Our bodies are limited, so we have to be strategic in how we use our timeouts, and I have to keep an eye on how they are playing,” Hill said. “We’ve lost several one- and two-point games this year, so for the girls to be able to grind one out is hopefully going to give them some confidence going into the second half of the season.
“We just got back from Gatlinburg, where we played three games in three days and actually got to the championship. We had a 15-point lead going into the fourth quarter and fatigue got us.”
Notre Dame (8-7) will face Chattanooga Christian School, a 66-40 winner over Meigs County, in a semifinal at 7 p.m. Friday. Signal Mountain, which downed Baylor 43-36, will face Tyner, a 50-42 overtime winner over Red Bank, in the other girls’ semifinal at 4 p.m. Baylor and Red Bank start the day’s play at 10 a.m., and LFO and Meigs County meet at 1 p.m.
Notre Dame won a battle of scoring runs to relegate the Lady Warriors (5-4) to the consolation bracket. The Irish opened the second quarter with an 11-0 surge to take a 20-10 lead, but LFO answered with a 19-2 run — led by eight points from Ziara Thompson — that ended that period and lasted the first six minutes of the third.
It was at that point Hill called a timeout and decided to go to a full-court press.
“I felt like we were getting lazy in our man defense,” he said. “A lot of girls were just standing, and we weren’t rotating. Once we got down there, we were struggling to breathe for a second, but we called timeout and changed it up and it seemed to get us going.”
It also completely flustered the Lady Warriors, who lost point guard Crystal Collins for a bit right after the timeout with an ankle injury and were already playing without star guard Christen Collins.
“There is no secret that defense is what’s going to keep you in games, so when I start seeing what was happening on the defensive end like today, I have to change it up,” Hill said. “No. 1, it got us moving more, and No. 2, it seemed to throw them off offensively.”
LFO withstood the pressure for a couple of minutes, taking a 34-28 lead on a Christina Gass 3-pointer with 5:20 remaining, but the Irish responded with a 7-0 run to retake the lead on Violet Wright’s free throw. Wright had five points during that mini run, and after Thompson’s putback basket gave LFO the lead back, Wright had a putback of her own with 1:17 left.
The Warriors committed four turnovers in the final 77 seconds as Callie McCormick and Yannah Baird led Notre Dame’s defensive surge.
Wright ended with 21 points to pace Notre Dame, which also received nine points and seven rebounds from its lone senior, Dayonna Perryman. Thompson led LFO with 13 points, with Zoey Gray-Martin adding nine.
› Tyner 50, Red Bank 42 (OT):
Shy Harrison scored six of her team-high 16 points in overtime as the Lady Rams improved to 8-4. Tyner trailed 13-4 after the first quarter, when Red Bank’s Journey Holloway scored seven points.
The Lady Lions (2-9) used seven points from Malika Odum to go up 35-29 entering the final quarter, but Tyner clamped down defensively and Harrison and Mariya Staton scored late to force the extra session. Staton added 11 points and Jocelyn Brookins nine for the winners, while Odum and Holloway had 20 and 18 points, respectively, for Red Bank.
› Signal Mountain 43, Baylor 36:
The Lady Eagles (13-2) cruised to a 31-15 halftime lead, but the Lady Red Raiders dominated the third quarter, taking a 36-35 lead on a Riley Olesik layup.
Signal Mountain, however, got the lead right back on one of Emily Redman’s five 3-pointers and never looked back. Carlee Lowery scored nine of her game-high 20 points in the opening quarter, with Redman finishing with 15. Olesik led Baylor (3-7) with 16 points, followed by Holly Merritt with 10.
› CCS 66, Meigs County 40:
Eighth grader Momo Moore scored a game-high 26 points — she got half of them in the second quarter — as the Lady Chargers improved to 8-4. Freshman Aubriyana Camp added 14 points, including 10 in the opening period, for CCS.
Lainey Fitzgerald had three 3-pointers while leading Meigs County (8-5) with 13 points.