DEFENSE FUELS BISHOP FOLEY PAST LUTHERAN NORTHWEST
MADISON HEIGHTS » If Madison Heights Bishop Foley wasn’t striking first Thursday night in its game against Rochester Hills Lutheran Northwest, the Ventures were busy answering.
Bishop Foley scored the first seven points of the game and used runs of 6-0, 7-0 and 6-1 throughout the game to pull away for a 44-26 victory over the Crusaders in its home gym.
“The fact that we were able to come out each quarter, no matter what just happened, and come out strong, pushing it hard, whether it was offensively or defensively, was great,” Foley head coach Colleen Szakacs said. “We actually had a lot of steals. We’ve been working on containment defense and going after the steals when they present themselves. And tonight we were able to do that.”
The Ventures’ defense led to some easy points early, with senior Alyssa Samartino and junior Ryan Moorer picking up steals in the game’s opening moments, leading to layups by Moore and senior Abby Pasinos. Samartino also hit a 3-pointer to help her team out to the 7-0 start.
Lutheran Northwest did not score its first points until just under the two-minute mark of the first quarter, on a layup by freshman Paige Macavage. The Crusaders fell behind 11-2 after one quarter, but used a 7-3 run to open the second and cut Foley’s lead to 14-9. But the Ventures answered by scoring the next six points, a 3-pointer by Pasinos, a free throw from Samartino and a baseline jump shot by Moorer to push the lead back to double digits.
Offensively, the Ventures are running a completely new system this year under Szakacs.
“Yeah, we have a lot of returners but we lost a big piece from last year (Melanie Moore), who was a big, tall post player for us. We don’t really have that this year, so we’ve had to change our offense to make it more guard-oriented. They’re doing a great job, especially tonight, offensively we were getting those looks that we’ve been hammering into the girls every single day. It’s really good to see they’re taking those big steps forward.”
Moorer led the way for Bishop Foley with her game-high 14 points. Samartino finished with 10 points, as did fellow senior Lauren Bartkiewicz, who had six points in the third quarter.
Lutheran Northwest was missing two starters, one of which was leading scorer Emily Grulke. The senior scored 16 points and pulled down 12 rebounds in the team’s season-opening loss to Detroit Country Day Tuesday. Also missing was sophomore Morgan Griswold.
“I’ve got three freshmen being thrown into the fire and they’re going to learn fast,” Crusaders head coach Jimmy Mehl
berg said. “They’re going to turn into sophomores by Christmas break. It’s going
to make us better at the end of the season when hopefully we’re healthy.”
Two of those freshmen, Macavage (six points) and Charlotte Gramzow (5), led the team in scoring Thursday night.
The Crusaders (0-2) play a brutal early-season schedule which included matchups with Country Day and Bishop Foley this week. But that’s just the start for Mehlberg and his team.
“It doesn’t get any easier
after this week. We’ve got Rochester Adams, Lake Orion and Rochester coming up,” Mehlberg said. “We’re trying to get better. If you want to be good, you’ve got to play good teams.”
Bishop Foley (2-0) is coming off a state semifinal appearance and returns four of five starters from a year ago. The bar is set high for the Ventures this season.
“We were close last year to winning that state title,”
Szakacs said. “Unfortunately when we got to that big stage, we had a couple of mishaps here and there. But now that we’ve gotten to that point, we’re hoping to take that next step and maybe get that state title.”