WGH’s 2nd half too much for Cards

By Joe Scalzo

The Raiders rallied from eight down at halftime to a 7-point win over Mooney.

WARREN — His team was leading by eight points at halftime, but when Mooney High girls basketball coach Jack Bermann was complimented on his team’s performance, he put his finger over his lips.

“I see a storm coming,” he said.

Sure enough, Warren Harding’s Aundrea Baldridge started the third quarter with a 3-pointer, the clouds opened and the downpour began.

“I knew it was coming,” said Bermann. “When it did, we went bleech. She starts off with that 3 and from that point on, it was eek.

“So you got a bleech and an eek.”

Harding outscored the Cardinals 16-5 in the third quarter and managed a 50-43 victory on Monday despite some awful free throw shooting down the stretch.

“We started off bad,” said Raiders coach P.J. Notar, whose team didn’t score in the game’s first six minutes. “At halftime, we just told them, ‘You’ve got to play with more intensity. They want it more and you’ve been playing timid.’

“We picked it up on man [defense] and before you know it, we were in the lead.”

Harding led by 10 with 90 seconds left but missed all five of its free throws in the final minutes. It was the latest manifestation of a season-long problem, Notar said.

“That’s typical for us,” he said of his team’s struggles from the line. “And I can’t even tell you how much we practice them.”

Jasmine Kirkland scored 14 points to go with nine rebounds and three steals for Harding (11-2), which has won seven straight.

“They haven’t won that many in a row because they were playing the Sisters of the Poor,” said Bermann.

Anita Brown added 13 points, Baldridge had 10 and Ronisha Howard grabbed nine rebounds despite missing much of the first half with foul trouble.

The Raiders held a 43-34 edge on the boards.

“They came out the way Harding plays — hard,” said Bermann. “It’s not as if we don’t practice it, but you can’t simulate them.

“They get after it, they make runs and you can call timeouts all you want, but they stay after it.”

Dominique Zordich had 10 points and 10 rebounds to lead Mooney (7-6), which saw its six-game winning streak end. The silver lining for the Cardinals is that the game didn’t count in the Steel Valley Conference standings.

Thursday games against league foes count. The others don’t. Mooney gets another shot against Harding, this time at home in a SVC game, on Feb. 12.

“Everyone knows how I feel about this league,” said Notar. “I mean, why even bother playing everybody twice?

“We want to win the league but every game is important.”

Mooney senior Katie Hughes added seven points and eight rebounds while battling the bigger Raiders inside.

For a half, it looked like the Cardinals would squeak out a victory. But eventually Harding’s advantages in size, speed and athleticism caught up with them.

“I thought it was a great win for our girls,” said Notar. “The girls showed a lot of composure, they fought to come back and they showed command when they were ahead.”

scalzo@vindy.com