Champion gets team effort in win over JFK

January 14, 2011 at 12:06a.m.

warren

Champion High girls basketball coach Jeff Thompson preaches “team” to his players, but this is getting ridiculous.

After sophomore substitute Darian Rogers nailed the game winning 3-pointer Monday to beat Newton Falls, fellow sophomore Gabby Lamont came off the bench to sink a trio of crucial 3-pointers as the Flashes defeated Warren JFK, 54-49, Thursday night..

“Our motto all year has been we win as a team,” Thompson said. “Every night it could be somebody else. Tonight it was Gabby Lamont hitting 3s, Bri Lewis hitting free throws tonight. Even [Jessica] McKnight, who had a rough night, hit a big free throw down the stretch. Every night it’s somebody else on this team.”

The Golden Flashes (10-2) have won 10 in a row and ended the Eagles’ (11-2) eight-game winning streak.

“We missed shots. We weren’t able to finish tonight,” JFK coach John Baytos said. “You’re going to have nights like that. I thought the kids played tremendous. We fought hard, we had a lot of good looks underneath the glass. But we missed some outside shots.

“It’s about making shots for us. When we’re hitting shots we get into our defense and our pace picks up and everyone’s flying around. That’s our type of game.”

Champion used a variety of defenses, including box-and-one, to limit Kennedy’s top scorer, Paige Klaric, to nine points. Erin McBride and Raesha Gaston led JFK in scoring with 14 points each. Lauren Lee came off the bench to score seven. Gaston had 11 rebounds and McBride seven, and Kelsie Massacci dished out four assists.

“Klaric is an excellent basketball player and our feeling was if they were going to beat us we were going to try to make somebody else beat us,” Thompson said. “Late in the game we ran some triangle-and-two against Klaric and McBride because McBride was hurting us as well. The big girl [Gaston] inside got some rebounds, but when you’re playing a team like this you’ve got to pick your poison.”

Champion was led by Mackenzie Kiser with 14 points and 14 rebounds. Lindsay Swipas had 12 points and five assists, Haley McAllister added nine points and 12 rebounds and Briana Lewis dished out six assists.

Champion’s largest lead was 42-34 with 5:22 remaining. The Eagles battled back, closing to 48-47 at the 1:16 mark, but the hole was too deep to climb out of and Champion sealed the win by making six-of-eight free throws in the final 50 seconds.