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Harding’s press, rebounding make short work of Boardman
By BOB ETTINGER
WARREN
It didn’t take the Warren Harding girls basketball team to establish itself against Boardman in All-American Conference Red Tier play on Thursday night. The Raiders scored the first 14 points and coasted to a 71-42 victory at Harding High School.
The Raiders (2-1, 1-0) used the press to force the Spartans (2-1, 0-1) into some tough positions that led to turnovers and took it back down the floor for easy buckets to take that 14-0 lead just more than five minutes into the game.
“We came out, wanted to win,” Harding guard Brayleonna Woods said. “We had to work hard, work as a team, first of all. Defense wins games. I feel like if we take a lead early, it helps us finish strong. If we start slow, we struggle to win the game. We just worked together and talked. Defense wins games.”
Getting off to a good start was the Raiders’ plan.
“One thing we talked about before the game was we wanted to come out in the first three minutes and play with intensity and play together,” Harding coach Frank Caputo said. “We had a lot of hands all over the place and we got deflections and got to the right spots and that helped out a lot.”
Harding led, 16-5, through the first eight minutes.
“We just talked about that,” Boardman coach Jeff Hammerton said. “We had prepared against their press. We knew they were athletic and quick and they were going to come out and trap us. We tried to prepare for that in practice, but it’s very hard to simulate the speed and the height and the length of their traps.
“Once we settled into the press breaker, we did a pretty good job, but before we knew it, we were down 14-0. It’s hard to come back from 14-0. You’re climbing uphill all night. And it takes a lot of energy to come back.”
The Raiders had 60 rebounds with five players having at least seven. Faith Burch led the way with 10, Chiparis Alexander had nine and Woods, Toni Donaldson and Indea Phillips each had seven.
The Spartans had just 21 rebounds.
“You’re not going to win many games when you get outrebounded by 39,” Hammerton said. “That’s a big discrepancy.”
Boardman scored 24 points from the free-throw line, but was just 8 of 40 from the field.
“We’re one of those teams that goes to the hole pretty hard,” Hammerton said. “That’s one of the things we stress at practice, so we do end up on the line a lot, but you’re right, when you’re only 8 for 40 from the field you aren’t going to win many games.”