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Ursuline’s feisty guards steal show against South Range
Ursuline’s feisty guards steal show
in victory over visiting South Range
By BOB ETTINGER
YOUNGSTOWN
Ursuline guards Cara McNally, Rachel Fabry and Jamie Nelson generally toil in anonymity, over-shadowed by teammates who fill the stat sheets in high-profile ways.
That’s not to say the trio, who team up to harass opposing ballhandlers like a swarm of mosquitoes, don’t find meaningful ways to contribute for the Fighting Irish, as they did in a 66-49 victory over South Range on Lyden Family Court on Saturday.
Ursuline’s Dayshanette Harris and South Range’s Izzy Lamparty staged a scoring duel, with the former scoring a game-high 30 points for the Irish and the latter putting up 27 for the Raiders.
But McNally, Fabry and Nelson stole the show and the ball — repeatedly.
“One of the things this team does tremendously is they play together,” Ursuline coach Vannessa Dickson said. “They’ve been playing together for two years now. The chemistry is there. Our length causes a lot of problems for the teams we play. Even in the zone, our length is a problem.”
Fabry, Nelson and McNally are best described as diminutive and therefore don’t fit the conventional definition of length in terms of a basketball player. What they do, though, is enhance the length of the rest of the Ursuline players in more creative ways to help in forcing turnovers.
“I don’t coach them to trap the way they do,” Dickson said. “That’s something they just do and I don’t tell them not to. The other girls do a good job of rotating to cover for them and Dayshanette usually comes up with the ball.”
It was with defense that Ursuline (9-4) frustrated the Raiders (9-7).
“They baited us into trying to take things that weren’t there,” South Range coach Tony Matisi said. “They were forcing the ball away from our ballhandlers.”
That’s part of where the triumvirate became most involved.
“We stressed to the kids their scorers are [Izzy Lamparty] and [Bri Modic],” Dickson said. “We wanted to take one of them completely away. We face-guarded [Modic] and wanted to give the other one a hard time. If we’d lost, we’d have lost because the other three girls on the floor beat us and I was OK with that because that was our gameplan based completely on our respect for those two players.”
The plan worked well because Nelson performed her role admirably.
“Jamie Nelson never gets credit for what she does because it doesn’t appear on the stat sheet,” Dickson said. “She’s my go-to girl when we faceguard a kid. She did a good job of limiting open looks.”
Fabry and McNally made their presence known on the offensive end as they spurred an 8-2 run that had Ursuline up, 33-24, to close the first half.
Fabry got it going with a conventional three-point play after being fouled on her patented scoop shot under duress in the lane. McNally followed with a 3-pointer.
“People laugh when [Fabry] hits those running scoop shots in the lane,” Dickson said. “But she practices those. She did a very good job at it today.”
Anyah Curd, who finished with 19 points, and Lindsey Bell (9 points), got the Irish out to a 7-2 spurt to open the second half as Ursuline pulled away.
“We’re always trying to exploit matchups and, usually, we’re able to do that,” Matisi said. “[Ursuline] flipped that on us. They saw some things they liked and they went after us. [Harris] is going to get her points. We can’t let the other kids go off like that.”
Harris got her points and played well in other areas, too.
“[Harris] does a great job getting the other girls involved in the game,” Matisi said. “You see what she does with her scoring, but she’s like having a coach on the floor. She sees something and exploits it. It’s not even about her [scoring points]. She just helps everyone on the floor exploit matchups.”
Modic added 12 points for the Raiders.