Crestview upends United, will play Rovers in district
The Rebels beat United after losing twice to the Golden Eagles this season.
By DOUG CHAPIN
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
MINERAL RIDGE — Coaches in general don’t like change. For the most part, they would rather stick with something familiar.
But Crestview High coach Tanja Simione and her staff figured what the Rebels had done against United in two regular season defeats obviously had not worked. So why not change, try something different?
The changes and a monster game from junior forward Chelsea Bowker resulted in Crestview’s 52-37 win over the fourth-seeded Golden Eagles Saturday night in a Division III sectional final at Mineral Ridge High. The Rebels (14-8) advanced to the district semifinal round Thursday at 7:30 p.m. against second-seeded Rootstown. The Rovers blasted Girard, 81-15, in the first game Saturday.
“We totally just took a risk and changed everything,” Simione said. “In two days, we showed them something that they’ve never seen before. We had Chelsea up on the point, and she’s usually inside. They have a tough defense which can fluster some people, but Chelsea’s a good ball handler. We were at least able to initiate our offense and get the ball into position where we could get some shots.
“Defensively, we changed up a lot and sort of threw them off their game. We kept changing the defenses and trying to confuse them. We wanted to get them out of rhythm. Holding them to only 37 points, we did our job on the defensive end.”
Bowker, a 5-foot-11 junior, scored 28 points on 10-for-14 shooting from the field and 8-for-8 at the line. She also grabbed 20 rebounds and had six assists and four steals.
“Third time’s a charm, we wanted to get this one,” Bowker said. “They are a big rival. They beat us twice and we wanted to get them back.”
United (15-7) went through a scoring drought covering the first 4:40 of the third quarter and saw a 25-21 halftime deficit balloon to a 35-21 gap. The Eagles missed all seven of their shots during that span and shot just 24 percent (16-for-67) from the field for the game.
“They switched defenses on us, which confused us at times, but I think the thing for me was we just couldn’t hit our shots,” United coach Roger Ziegler said. “Even though they were switching up on us with their defenses, we still got the shots we wanted. We’ll take them any day, they just wouldn’t go in tonight. Even foul shots, we couldn’t put them in. We got rebounds, couldn’t put it in. We got the ball 3 feet from the hole and couldn’t put it in.
"I don’t want to take anything away from Crestview. They played a great game, they were up for it, Chelsea Bowker did a nice job. But we just didn’t make shots.”
Maggie Miller led United with 13 points and four steals. Courtney Baker, the lone senior in the lineup, contributed eight points and seven rebounds. Lauren Rockhold had nine rebounds and Maggie Sell had six steals.
Supporting Bowker for Crestview were Hillary Phillis with 11 points and nine rebounds, and Shanelle Davner with six rebounds.
“I’m really proud of our team for responding to the changes we made in a short amount of time,” Simione said. “They really took care of business. They came out to the gym a couple of times each day. We had a short practice, took a break, and came back in the evening just so we could get things accomplished. I’m really proud of them for taking on this challenge.”
Rootstown (15-7) got 25 points from Ashley Christiani, 17 from Paige Berger and 16 from Lauren Hughes. All three were still in the game in the fourth quarter despite quarter leads of 22-6, 43-11 and 68-13 by the Rovers.
Chelsea Guerrieri had seven points and six rebounds and Ashley Esposito, Girard’s lone senior, had seven rebounds for the Indians (1-20).