Bellwood-Antis caught fire in the second half of the Lady Blue Devil consolation final to post a 57-43 victory over Moniteau from District 10. B-A sophomore Liz Erickson had a monster game with 31 points and 18 rebounds to lead the Bellwood-Antis girls to third place.
Finding themselves down 20-17 at halftime, the Lady Blue Devils turned on the heat on offense for 40 second-half points, after scoring more than 41 points just once in their first eight ballgames.
Erickson and Brittany Webb pounded in baskets to begin the third quarter to give the Lady Blue Devils their first lead since the beginning of the second quarter. The lead then changed hands five times in the next few minutes, before Erickson hit one of two from the foul line and Ashley Lechner pumped in back-to-back three-pointers that gave Bellwood-Antis a 34-30 lead at the end of three quarters.
Shalee Hunter hit a basket and one of two free throws to begin the final quarter and then came back minutes later with a putback basket and two foul shots. Moniteau took a timeout, bit that failed to cool off the Lady blue devils, who added two free throws by Erickson and another bucket by Hunter to stretch the B-A advantage to 47-33 at the 3:30 mark. Over the remainder of the game, the two schools traded scores with Erickson taking command with two baskets from in close and a foul shot, Webb a basket and Lechner with one of two from the charity stripe and then stealing the ball under the B-A basket and laying it in for two.
“We have been stressing to the guards especially and to everyone that comes into the game that we are going to have to take some of the scoring load away from Liz,” explained Bellwood-Antis coach Ali Stodart. “Teams are starting to double-team her. She did an excellent job in finding the open person in different situations. Ashley Lechner made some huge three-pointers and I thought that Shalee Hunter played an excellent game. She plays hard every game, it was definitely nice to see her get her first double-double.”
Erickson carried the Lady Blue Devils early, scoring all of her team’s first 11 points in an 11-7 first quarter on four baskets and a perfect three-of-three from the foul line, and had 13 points in the book at halftime.
Second half scoring margins of 17-10 and 23-13 broke the game wide open for the Lady Blue Devils, who improve their record to 2-7. The inexperienced B-A girls, seem to making a big effort for improvement from the early portion of the season, when they had trouble taking care of the basketball and on defense.
Hunter joined Erickson with 10 points and 10 rebounds, and Ashley Lechner added nine points and had numerous assists.
Amanda Gladd led Moniteau with 10 points, Amy Gladd scored nine points and Kenzie Timblin added eight points.
Northern Cambria won their third straight Lady Blue Devil Classic title by defeating Northern Bedford 44-22 in the championship game.
Northern Cambria’s Jenn Valeria won the Tournament MVP Award and was joined on the All-Tournament Team by teammate Brittany Sedlock, Danis Kilgore and Brittany Beech of Northern Bedford and the Lady Blue Devils’ own Liz Erickson and Shalee Hunter. Valeria and Kilgore repeated on the all-tournament team from last year, when Valeria’s older sister, Jess Valeria won the MVP award for the second straight year.
Erickson scored a total of 47 points and had 28 rebounds. Hunter scored 17 points and had 23 rebounds for the tournament.
Bellwood-Antis will travel to Glendale on Wednesday, Jan. 3 for their next action. The junior varsity game will begin at 6 p.m, with the varsity contest tipping off at 7:30 p.m.
Bellwood-Antis 57 Moniteau 43
Moniteau – Ama. Gladd 2 5-6 10, Neff 0 2-4 2, Amy Gladd 2 5-9 9, Kristufek 1 0-0 2, Campbell 0 0-0 0, McCorry 2 1-3 5, McCaslin 2 3-6 7, Timblin 3 2-4 8, Harding 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 12 18-32 43.
Bellwood-Antis – Ingram 0 0-0 0, Webb 2 0-0 4, Young 0 0-0 0, Lombardo 0 1-2 1, Lechner 3 1-2 9, Lender 0 0-0 0, E. Derr 1 0-0 2, Hunter 3 4-6 10, Erickson 11 9-14 31, Jones 0 0-0 0, Hippo 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 20.
Score by Quarters
Moniteau 7 13 10 13 – 43
Bellwood-Antis 11 6 17 23 – 57
Three-point goals:?Moniteau 1 (Ama. Gladd)
Bellwood-Antis 2 (Lechner)
