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Harris, Ursuline defense combine to beat Mooney
YOUNGSTOWN
Freshman Dayshannette Harris scored a game-high 23 points as Ursuline drilled Cardinal Mooney, 47-30, to help Ursuline coach Vannessa Dickson record her second career win.
After an 0-6 start, first-year coach Dickson registered her first career win when Ursuline beat St. Thomas Aquinas on Dec. 12, 47-44.
“Credit A.D. Sean Durkin, who puts together a schedule that is extremely tough for a Division III program,” said Dickson, a 2006 Ursuline graduate. “But that’s what we want, to get prepared for tournaments down the line. Instead of wins or losses, we focus more on getting better. Right now, we’re starting to put things together and, because of that, we won two basketball games.”
Dickson said that Harris’ point production is negotiable.
“Of the points she puts on the board, she could probably score a lot more, but she’s a very unselfish player. We teach Irish family and we teach team basketball and as a first-year player, she’s definitely bought into that.”
How about that? A first-year player and first-year coach on a team whose varsity lineup comprises seniors and freshmen and one junior: Simone Comer.
Ursuline put the pressure on Mooney with a full-court press that caused the Cardinals (0-6) to suffer 21 turnovers.
“It’s something that we’re still trying to come in on our own about,” Dickson said of the pressure that helped Ursuline (2-6) lead by as many as 23 at 40-17.
“We definitely like to force the tempo on teams because we play pretty deep. We have a lot of kids who are in shape and can run.”
Dickson said that Ursuline has a couple different presses, but didn’t use all of them on Wednesday because “That’s the one we definitely needed to work on.”
Was Dickson surprised that Mooney and coach Erica Wilson didn’t do likewise?
“No, because Mooney and Ursuline know each other pretty well and I’m not necessarily surprised that they didn’t press,” she said. “That’s what their game plan was and that’s what she decided to do.”
Wilson, Mooney’s second-year coach, said that Ursuline meant business.
“They talked on defense and they were aggressive and they wanted it,” Wilson said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that they came after it because they wanted to win. We let their defense dictate everything we did on offense. That’s what you do when you’re the other coach — you want your defense to do that. Offensively, we played very timid and we didn’t take care of the ball.”
Why did Wilson choose not to exert similar pressure?
“We were concerned with No. 32 [Comer] and No. 1 [Harris] being so quick off the dribble that we didn’t want to get beat and give them points,” she said. “We wanted to try to keep them in front of us and make them earn their points.”
Comer had 10 points for Ursuline, while Maggie Monahan, Taylor Martin and Kelly Williams had eight, seven and six points, respectively, for Mooney.
As instrumental as an energized Harris was converting steals, interceptions and recoveries into layups, Monahan was intimidating with eight blocked shots.
Ursuline had another dynamo in Gabby Miklandric, who forced a five-second call while guarding a Cardinal dribbler and who showed guts when fighting for the ball despite being squeezed in a human vise between two Mooney players.
Neither team shot well, with the Irish hitting 19 of 65 goals, while the Cardinals made 10 of 37.