A thin bench and some hot shooting led to a trio of losses last week for the Cheney High School girls basketball team. The Lady Blackhawks suffered their first loss of the season at Post Falls Dec. 4, 69-49, and followed that with two setbacks at home, 56-50 to Freeman on Wednesday, Dec. 5 and 77-54 to Clarkston on Friday, Dec. 7.
Clarkston hit 12 3-pointers against Cheney — shooting almost 50 percent from beyond the arc — including their first two shots of the second half, turning a 38-25 lead into a 44-25 advantage. The Bantams stretched that to 46-25 before Shelby Draper and Aiji Loffredi countered with a pair of buckets to pull Clarkston’s margin back under 20 points at 46-29, but could get no closer in suffering their first Great Northern League loss.
Cheney owned an 18-14 lead after the first period, but Clarkston heated up from the field, outscoring the Lady Blackhawks 24-7 in the second and 27-16 in the third quarters.
“We lost the second and third quarters by a bunch,” third-year Cheney head coach Lorin Carlon said. “I think that’s the most threes anybody’s made on us.”
Carlon said his players have to work on their 1-1-3 zone defense some more, especially the three-player formation who need to rotate outside quicker to cover perimeter shooters.
Senior Haley Pemberton led Cheney in scoring with 13 points, with Shelby Draper adding 11 and Maggie Smith 10.
“Clarkston has a good chance to win the league,” Carlon said. “They have size, speed and can shoot.”
Cheney’s loss against Northeast A League Freeman is one Carlon felt the Lady Blackhawk should have won, but just ran out of steam at the end. Cheney rallied from a 10-5 first quarter deficit to pull within two at the half, and took a 36-35 lead after three quarters, only to fade in the fourth.
Loffredi led Cheney with 16 points, with Evans adding 12. Carlon said he’s really playing with a seven-player rotation right now, and is working with the girls to build up their conditioning and abilities to be factors late in games.
“You can win a game by winning the fourth quarter,” he said. “You can lose a game by losing the fourth quarter.”
The same proved true at Post Falls where the host Trojans used a hot shooting second half — led by Bailey Gleaves’ four 3-pointers — and familiarity with playing on their home court to turn a 27-21 game into a 20-point win. Carlon said they have a college-style 94-foot floor, whereas the Lady Blackhawks practice and play on the more high school conventional 84-foot floor.
Smith led Cheney with 12 points, followed by Pemberton with 11 and Evans and Loffredi with 10 each.
The Lady Blackhawks (1-3, 0-1) return to GNL action by traveling to West Valley (3-1, 0-0) on Friday and returning home to face reigning league champion East Valley (6-0, 1-0) Tuesday. Carlon said they hope to stay close to the Knights, who finished fourth at the state 2A tournament in March, while dealing with the Eagles penchant for shooting 3s and running an up-tempo game.
“We’ll see if we can slow them down a bit and guard the three and see what we can do,” he said.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
Reader Comments(0)