L’Anse Creuse North shows depth in victory over Clarkston
It’s no secret that Brooke Daniels is a phenomenal basketball player.
But the L’Anse Creuse North High School girls basketball team knows it can’t rely on her alone to make a deep run into the state tournament for a second straight year.
Daniels nearly turned in a double-double on Friday in the Crusaders’ 64-56 win over Clarkston on the road.
Daniels finished with 23 points, 20 rebounds, eight assists and eight steals. Perhaps the most impressive offensive stat concerning Daniels’ performance, however, was that she only scored two points in the second half.
“One girl can’t lead us to a championship,” L’Anse Creuse North coach Claire Kapral said. “We definitely need (other players) to step up. That takes a lot of pressure off of Brooke to have to do everything.”
The supporting cast earned a gold star on this night.
LCN (14-1) came out with a much more balanced approach on offense in the third quarter. Olivia Chadwick, Jekiah Mack and Annabella Stout knocked down baskets during a 17-1 run that saw the Crusaders go from trailing by eight points to leading by eight.
Mack finished with 20 points while Chadwick and Stout both contributed eight.
“I was thrilled. I was trying to dish them the ball as much as I could because I know I can’t win without my teammates,” Daniels said.
In the first half, the game was a shootout between Daniels and the Wolves’ Madison Skorupski. The Clarkston senior outscored the Crusaders on her own in the first quarter. She ended the period by driving to the basket, scoring and getting fouled as the buzzer sounded. She sank the free throw to give herself 15 points to LCN’s 12.
Clarkston (8-5) took a 38-30 lead at halftime. Daniels had 21 points and Skorupski had 20.
But by the time Skorupski scored a pair of buckets near the end of the third quarter, her team trailed 49-44. The Wolves never got closer than five points for the remainder of the game.
Skorupski finished the game with 30 points.
“She’s phenomenal,” Kapral said. “I don’t have enough good things to say about her, but it takes more than one outstanding player to win a basketball game. We as a team played better, and that’s why we came away with a win.”
That includes the way the Crusaders performed on the boards, outrebounding Clarkston 40-12.
“We lost the rebounding battle,” Clarkston assistant coach
Kyle Hawes said. “In the second half, they beat us on the boards and in basketball that’s what’s going to happen. We had a big stretch where we couldn’t
score and when it ended, it got closer a little bit. But it was too big of a stretch of where we didn’t score and didn’t get rebounds.”
It was a crushing defeat for the second-place team in the OAA Red. The Crusaders, meanwhile, move on to the remaining five games on their schedule
with a shot at winning a second straight MAC White championship.
“I feel like we’re in a good place. We can’t let up now,” Daniels said. “The next couple of games for our season are going to be tough games. We have to give everything we have every game.”