Canton turns it on in second half

HARTFORD — It’s not like Canton girls basketball coach Brian Medeiros hadn’t told his players this before. Once again, after he watched another first half where his team played in what he called “slow-motion" Monday night, he told the Warriors at halftime to play with more energy.

In the second half against SMSA, they did. They rebounded. They got their fastbreak going. Abby Charron had 10 assists, many to Allison Celmer on the break. Celmer, a junior, had a career-high 20 points and Canton won 55-37 in a game between two of the top teams in the NCCC at SMSA.

“The last couple games on the road, we’ve really struggled to get off to a good start,” Medeiros said. “We’ve done enough to get a lead, and then we’ve plateaued. Tonight was another reminder of that.

“It’s the same talk we have all the time. We didn’t rebound well in the first half and that stopped us from getting out and running. I thought we did a better job of rebounding [in the second half ].”

When they got the def ensive rebound, Medeirois would yell, “Go!”

Charron, a junior point guard, had 11 points and seven rebounds for Canton (12-1), which is seventh in The Courant’s area rankings. Sarah Bowman had seven rebounds.

SMSA (9-2), the Class S runner-up last year, was led by Becca Mayer with 17 points.

“We weren’t hitting our shots, and we were playing lazy defense. Against a great team that passed the ball well, that’s going to cost you,” SMSA coach John Antolini said. “They picked us apart. We didn’t have it tonight.”

Charron hit a 3-pointer to give Canton a 29-22 lead at halftime. But the Warriors weren’t rebounding as well and not going for loose balls as aggressively as SMSA was.

“Brian kind of gave us a little bit of a pep talk,” Charron said. “We realized we weren’t playing as hard as we could have, so we all stepped up our game.”