Beverly delivers in the clutch for Ursuline

By TOM WILLIAMS

VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF

YOUNGSTOWN — After being limited to a rebound and a free throw for about the first 12 minutes of action, Ursuline senior basketball player Jaleesa Beverly took charge.

With the Irish trailing Warren Harding 24-13 in their Steel Valley Conference opener Thursday, Beverly sparked the Irish to an 11-1 run that turned a romp into a contest.

And with 10 seconds remaining in the game and the score tied, Irish guard Lucia Petrus zipped a pass to Beverly near the free throw line. Beverly coolly sank a jump shot for the winning points in Ursuline’s 56-54 victory.

“This was a Steel Valley game and I wanted to make sure that I put my team on my back and carried them the way I’m supposed to,” said Beverly, who finished with 19 points. “When Lucia got me the ball, I wasn’t nervous or anything like that.

“I just knew that I had to calm down and make the shot, go up strong and complete the bucket,” Beverly said. “It felt great.”

Still, the game wasn’t quite over. The Raiders rapidly pushed the ball upcourt where junior Kamela Bender took her final shot of a solid performance.

“From my angle and I was right behind her, the shot was dead on,” Ursuline (5-6, 1-0) coach Sean Durkin said. “It was just short.”

Bender opened the game with six points, two rebounds, a block and a steal as the Raiders (8-5, 0-1) jumped out to a 15-5 lead.

“She’s a heckuva player, very athletic,” Durkin said of Bender who scored a game-high 20 points. “She is difficult to defend because she does a lot of things well on the floor.”

Bender called the close defeat “frustrating because we were doing so well. We feel this game was taken from us. Everything was going great and then that one breakdown took us down.

“Our last game went to overtime and if I would have made that shot, we felt we would have gone to overtime again,” said Bender who had five rebounds, three blocks and two steals. “So far, we’re 2-1 in overtimes so close games are nothing new to us.”

Beverly called Bender “an all-around great player. We get in front of her to try and stop her in transition because she likes to drive to the bucket.”

Bender was limited to two points in the second quarter as the Irish climbed back into the game, reducing Harding’s advantage to 25-24 right before halftime.

“We tend to start slow this year,” Durkin said. “We showed some character coming back from a pretty big first-half deficit.

“We struggled offensively in the first quarter,” Durkin said. “When we created some turnovers, we scored some easy buckets and got our confidence going. Then our half-court offense started to open up.”

The Irish jumped ahead 39-33 after Kaneesha Tensley’s second-3-pointer of the third quarter. The Raiders responded with a 9-0 run that included baskets by Bender, Jasmine Kirkland and Aundrea Baldridge.

Late in the game, the Irish led 52-46 when Kirkland scored two buckets and Bender one for a tie.

“We were kind of hoping to show the maturity to win a tight game,” Durkin said. “That’s the first time we’ve done that this year and hopefully it’s a sign of things to come.”

Tensley scored 14 points while Jasmine Brown and Victoria Miles had seven apiece.

For the Raiders, Kirkland and Kourtney Williams each had 10 points while Baldridge had nine.

williams@vindy.com