Erie’s defense overwhelms Frederick in win
ERIE >> As the 2023 portion of the prep basketball slate comes to a close, Erie’s girls put on a show that displayed talent both young and old. Frederick couldn’t keep up before Class 6A’s fourthranked Tigers went on to win, 49-40, on their home court on Friday night.
Up to that point, the Golden Eagles — ranked No. 10 in CHSAA’S 5A RPI system — had a stranglehold on nearly all their opponents as well. They just couldn’t keep up with the triple threat posed by Erie sophomore shooting guard Juliet Slater, senior shooting guard Maddie Hartel and the Tigers’ suffocating defense.
“I definitely think that’s helped propel us because we get ourselves going,” Slater said of the team’s ball pressure. “We get steals, we get a lot of energy.”
Slater took the reins of Erie’s offense with 17 points, followed closely by Hartel’s 15. Frederick junior point guard Zoe Wittler led from the other side of the court, draining three 3-pointers for nine total points. Senior guard/forward Gabby Jima backed her up with eight points of her own.
“It’s been hard up to this point, but starting tonight, it’s really ramping up for us, so getting one right now should parlay us into playing at a high level moving forward,” Erie head coach Tyler Cerveny said. “Even though (Slater) is considered a young player, she was a varsity starter all year as a freshman, so she’s battle-tested. I have all the confidence in the world in ‘J.’”
The Tigers commanded the pace of the game from start to finish, and relied on a strong opening from Hartel to carry
them to an 11-0 advantage out of the gate. Their tough defense took the air out of the Frederick offense, which got its first points on the board with 2:49 left in the first quarter thanks to a Wittler trey.
That long shot helped wake up the Golden Eagles, who stormed back to trail just 16-10 by the end of that frame.
Erie, however, wouldn’t let them get much closer than that.
The Erie zone continued to take Frederick out of its game and built up as much as a 17-point lead, 40-23, with just 1:21 left in the third quarter. The Golden Eagles, however, still had a little juice left in them.
Frederick went on a scoring rampage over the next nine minutes, pulling as close as 46-40 before reaching the conclusion of the contest.
“They’re the first team that we’ve seen this year that’s played the zone on us, which surprised us a little bit,” Frederick head coach Jake Hansen said. “We just got to execute better, attack when it’s there and knock the shots down when they’re there.”
The Tigers, now 6-1, will chill out for winter break and return to action at Fossil Ridge on Jan. 6. The 5-2 Golden Eagles, likewise, will take a few weeks to regroup before hosting Roosevelt on Jan. 5.
Wittler hopes her girls can learn from the setback and come back stronger in 2024.
“I think, honestly, it’s the chemistry we have right now,” she said. “We are very good about holding each other up, and we’re really good about, in practice, being able to call each other out… like, ‘Hey, you might not have seen this. Look for this.’ It helps us to be able to grow as players and also builds trust.”