SPORTSINK.COM PHOTO
A dozen college recruiters attended the WTCBCA senior all-star games on Monday night at Barberton High School.
BARBERTON, Ohio – Two days ago the Cloverleaf Colts lost to the Green Bulldogs, their third Suburban League defeat in four games. The Colts knew they had to find a way to make things work.
After the loss to Green, the Cloverleaf players got together to discuss what they needed to do to have success. Two days later it is hard to argue with the results. The Colts defeated host Barberton 57-41 in the championship game of the Barberton Lady Magics Holiday Classic – their second win in as many days.
“We knew we needed to take advantage of Katie (Simpson) in the middle, she’s a strong presence on the inside,” Cloverleaf coach John Carmigiano said. “It was a nice two-day tournament for us. The girls responded to the request to come together and play hard.
“It’s a good lesson for some of the games we’re going to face in the new year.”
Cloverleaf raced to a fast start behind Simpson, a senior forward, to take a 12-0 lead just five minutes into the game. Simpson scored the first seven points of the game en route to a game-high 20 points.
“We’ve had a couple rough spots this season and we were really fired up to come together and play together as team,” Simpson said. “We all really do like playing basketball together so the chemistry that we have is wonderful.”
Barberton, who has been hampered by injuries, had some struggles early as senior forward Megan Jerome was forced to the bench early with two quick fouls.
“We had Megan in foul trouble early and we got down early. To top it off we’re banged up so we can’t get those rotations,” Barberton Kevin Pletcher said. “We did a nice job of battling back, but it just didn’t work out tonight.”
Once down the Magics had to use all their energy trying to catch up, which they did with success for much of the game, but they could never fully capture momentum and take the lead.
Barberton entered the second quarter down 16-8, but quickly cut the lead down to four points with four minutes left in the half. The rest of the quarter the Magics traded buckets with the Colts and trailed 30-23 at the break.
Cloverleaf put the game away in the third quarter, going on a 13-3 run through the first seven minutes.
“This was the style we always wanted to play with tough defense that transitions into easy baskets,” Carmigiano said. “We haven’t played much man-to-man defense all year and that’s what we kept finding ourselves in and the kids took a lot of pride in that one-on-one mentality.”
In addition to Simpson, who was named to the all-tournament team, the Colts received nine points from senior Shelby Dearth – also an all-tournament selection – and eight markers from senior Samantha Furr.
Barberton was led by senior guard Jessie Frost, who scored a team-high 17 points.
In the other game at the Barberton Lady Magics Holiday Classic:
Ellet 39, Coventry 30. At Barberton, in the consolation game of the Lady Magics Holiday Classic, both Ellet assistant head coach Chris Merring and Coventry coach Bob McNamara were satisfied in the increase in effort for their teams after suffering setbacks in the tournament a day earlier.
Ellet began the game on an 8-2 run and was generally able to control the paint with 6-foot-1 senior forward Quinn Parker leading the way and with junior Gabrielle Mayse being aggressive on the offensive end of the floor as the Orangemen never trailed.
“We had 10 days off before the game yesterday and yesterday we came out a little flat and tonight they came out ready to play,” Merring said. “I thought all the girls handled the ball really well. They did an exceptional job with that.”
Parker scored 10 points for the Orangemen, while Mayse dropped in 11 to lead Ellet.
Mayse came up big in the second half with eight points on three field goals – including a pair of and-one situations.
Maybe the biggest factor was the timing of when Mayse scored her points.
After the Comets scored the first basket of the third quarter to cut the Orangemen lead to four, Mayse drove the lane and picked up a bucket and a foul to push the advantage back to seven. The talented junior started the fourth quarter with another 3-point play finished at the foul line. Finally with three minutes left Coventry cut the game to three, and Mayse drained a pair of free throws to seal the victory.
“I know that I had to put the team on my back and I’m willing to do anything to win, because that’s what’s important to me,” Mayse said.
Coventry struggled with second-chance opportunities all night as Parker and Mayse crashed the boards along with Dynasti Malone-Smith. The trio combined for 21 boards.
“Unfortunately we weren’t ready for (Parker), we knew she was a force inside,” McNamara said. “Even though we knew it we didn’t do anything about it (early).”
One thing not lost on McNamara was the effort that was put forward one night after Cloverleaf beat the Comets by 34 points, as junior Kristi Morisak poured in 10 points.
There’s no question that we were much more active tonight and we started executing some things,” McNamara said. “We got it down to three points with a few minutes left and we got there because the girls really started working tonight, and we have to get that to carry over.”
Barberton Lady Magics Holiday Classic All-Tournament Team
Shelby Dearth, Sr., Cloverleaf
Katie Simpson, Sr., Cloverleaf
Megan Jerome, Sr., Barberton
Jessie Frost, Sr., Barberton
Gabrielle Mayse, Jr., Ellet
Neshaunde Lockett, Sr., Ellet
Alyssa Angeletti, Jr., Coventry
Kristi Morisak, Jr., Coventry