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Brookfield defense handles Girard in season finale
BROOKFIELD
Girard came into Wednesday night’s game hoping to seal sole possession of second place in the All-American Conference Blue Tier, but Brookfield’s girls were not in a charitable mood.
The result was Brookfield’s 40-20 win and a Blue Tier co-sharing of second place as the regular season came to a close for both teams.
Brookfield (17-5, 8-4), which also beat Girard on Jan. 13, 47-40, benefited from Girard’s poor 8 of 40 field-goal shooting.
“We just couldn’t put the ball in the hoop,” Girard coach Andy Saxon said. “We didn’t get a lot of good inside shots, we didn’t get a lot of easy shots and we didn’t get too many offensive rebounds; those are the easiest points you can get. We were shooting the ball from the outside and weren’t making anything and weren’t getting any second and third shots. They just packed us in [defensively] and we couldn’t shoot.”
When Girard did connect, it was from down low where Alexia Page-Boyd managed a team-high nine points for the Indians (13-9, 8-4).
“The kids played hard from the beginning to the end,” said Saxon, who entered the game with 385 wins in his 30th year as Girard’s head coach.
“I’ve been at the same school longer than anyone in Ohio,” Saxon said. “I never changed, I never moved and I never got fired.”
While Girard was 1 of 14 from three-point range, Brookfield was 1 of 1 — by Tori Sheehan.
Overall, the homecourt Warriors connected on 17 of 44 goals, mostly (16 of 43) from the paint area.
Bailey Drapola’s 12 points led Brookfield while Sheehan had 10. Of the winners’ 27 rebounds, Drapola had seven and Autumn Kirila six.
Camille Stoffick had seven of Girard’s 23 rebounds.
Brookfield coach Shawn Hammond had his Warriors deviate from recent games and, instead, concentrated on half-court defense.
“Typically, we’ve been pressing a lot, especially because we’ve been playing three games in five days,” he said. “We play a lot of kids, but, tonight, we just wanted to work on our halfcourt [defense]. It’s like we’ve taken a step back. We wanted to work on playing good, halfcourt defense – getting out and running out on the shooters. It was a low-scoring game, so I want to think and believe that our kids did a nice job of getting out and, at least, contesting the shots and make them think about us.”
Of Girard’s 16 steals, junior Makayla Trebella had five, while Ali Ciminero, who didn’t play much in the second half after injuring an ankle earlier, had three of Girard’s four assists. Ciminero started the game as the visitors’ leading scorer with 14 points per game.
In its Division III tournament opener on Feb. 17, the Warriors entertain Pymatuning Valley at 7 p.m. Girard’s first postseason test in Division II is Saturday at Southeast at 1.