Eagles handle Bulldogs, stay unbeaten in 21-6A
The state-ranked Atascocita girls moved one step closer to their first outright district championship in three years.
They’re three games away from doing it with a clean sheet.
Senior guard Dari Gabriel supplied 14 points, and the Eagles shook off a slow start to sweep the rival Bulldogs, prevailing 5741 on Friday night at Summer Creek to move to 11-0 in District 21-6A.
“This is a huge win for us,” Atascocita coach Veronica Johnson said. “We’ve got to finish it off.
“The job is not done by any means.”
The Bulldogs dropped to 25-5, 9-2 with their second setback against Atascocita. The Eagles won 4626 on Jan. 2.
Summer Creek jumped out 11-6 in the rematch but couldn’t stay ahead.
Defense bears down
After the Eagles settled down — and started communicating more effectively on defense — they closed the first quarter on an 8-0 run, then scored the first five in the second to take a 19-11 advantage.
“They brought a great crowd (Friday), and so did we, and so it was hard for us to hear,” Johnson said. “We couldn’t really hear, so we had to go to our hand signals, and once we realized we could control the tempo of the game, we settled down and we started playing our game.”
The Bulldogs closed within 23-21 on Maliyah Johnson’s layup with 2 minutes left in the second, but they trailed 29-21 at halftime after 3-pointers by Alex Hopkins and Gabriel in the last 50 seconds.
Hopkins, a senior post, banked in hers from 3 feet behind the line.
Gabriel, who scored 10 points in the first half, delivered her trey with 5 seconds left before the break.
“She’s had two really good games, especially against Kingwood (in a 91-31 win last week) and (Friday) against Summer Creek,” Johnson said. “Before the game started, we talked about this being their last opportunity to get (the Bulldogs), and they had to step up and do it one more time.”
Junior Shaniya Klauser scored 13 points, and sophomore center Elyssa Coleman contributed nine on a night the Eagles’ top scorer, sophomore DeDe Davis, didn’t have her best game, finishing with seven.
“That’s the joy about this team,” Johnson said. “When they realize one of them is not having a great night, somebody else will step up.”
Telemaque top scorer
Damaya Telemaque led Summer Creek with a game-high 15 points.
She scored seven points in the third by attacking the basket, helping the Bulldogs pull within five, 38-33, late in the quarter after trailing by as much as 12, but they ran out of gas in the fourth quarter.
Atascocita took a 54-38 lead with 2:48 left, then cruised to the win.
“They were killing us on the offensive boards, and so that was the first thing we talked about at halftime,” Johnson said. “We had to out-rebound them.
“We had a goal for rebounds (Friday), and we reached that goal in the second half.”