The Bellwood-Antis girls basketball team has been doing their best imitation of Dr. Jeckle/Mr. Hyde in the young 2004-05 basketball season. When the girls control the ball the height of Steph Hatch and Lauren Carter and the steady play of Lindsey Claar, Jenna Ralston and Allison Sinisi are hard to beat. Witness their big win on Tuesday night against West Branch.
When they turn the ball over, however, it is a completely different story. In the opener against Tyrone, the Lady Blue Devils committed 34 turnovers. On Friday night at Southern Huntingdon, the B-A girls turned the ball over 27 more times in a 71-49 defeat at the hands of the Lady Rockets.
The Southern Huntingdon girls (3-0) return all but one starter from last year and really don’t need the help, but Bellwood-Antis (1-2) was their own worst enemy.
“Southern Huntingdon is a real veteran team,” explained Bellwood-Antis coach Nick Lovrich. “Their kids have been starters since their freshman years, sophomore years. They have a really talented team and Coach Beck always has them ready to play. Our biggest problem is our turnovers. If we can take care of the basketball a little bit better, the game is a lot closer. We had a lot of unforced errors, that’s out biggest problem.”
Bellwood-Antis started out slowly. Lauren Carter sank a pair of foul shots to get B-A on the scoreboard first, but then Southern Huntingdon went on a 10-point run, until Steph Hatch hit a foul shot and then a basket to slice the Lady Rocket lead in half, 10-5. The two teams traded buckets for the rest of the opening quarter, until Jenna Ralston tossed in a three-pointer to get the Lady Blue Devils to within three (20-17) at the end of the stanza.
The Blue Devils fell apart in the second quarter, getting outscored 14-2 with the Lady Rockets cruising to a 34-19 halftime advantage, largely through a number of turnovers and the fact that the B-A girls were ice cold, hitting just .188 (six-for-32) during the first two quarters.
Hatch opened the third quarter by drilling a trey but the Lady Blue Devils were able to play the Southern girls only basket-for-basket for most of the rest of the third period. Hatch blocked a Southern shot, grabbed the ball and raced coast-to-coast for a layup that started a B-A run that closed the score to 46-37. The string began at the end of the third and continued through the start of the fourth quarter and featured two free throes by Carter and a trey from Jamie Smith.
Southern built their advantage back up to 17 points (56-39) and breezed to their third straight victory of the year.
“We fought back after a slow start in the first quarter,” said Lovrich. “We showed a lot of character on the girls. We got it down and they pulled ahead and we fought back again. We got it back to eight points sometime there in the second half. Then maybe we ran out of steam. Our biggest opponent was turnovers.”
Hatch led the Lady Blue Devils with 14 points and added six rebounds, nine blocks, four assists and a pair of assists. Carter scored eight points and added seven rebounds, three blocks and three steals. Smith had 12 points, Ralston scored seven points and Sinisi contributed six.
Sara Clark pumped in 21 points to lead the Lady Rockets and Jenna Hershey and Hillary Shope scored 14 points each.
The Bellwood-Antis junior varsity fell to Southern Huntingdon 49-8 in the preliminary game. Brittany Webb scored six points for the B-A Jayvees. Alicia Hockenberry and Cate Gilliland led the Southern Huntingdon junior varsity with 14 points each.
Bellwood-Antis entertains Moshannon Valley at the B-A High School gym on Wednesday with junior varsity action beginning at 6 p.m.
Southern Huntingdon 71 Bellwood-Antis 49
BELLWOOD-ANTIS – Hatch 5 3-4 14, Ralston 3 0-0 7, Sinisi 3 0-0 6, Carter 1 6-8 8, Smith 3 4-7 12, Claar 1 0-1 2. TOTALS 16 13-20 49.
SOUTHERN HUNTINGDON – Shope 4 6-7 14, Clark 9 0-0 21, Kern 2 0-0 4, Wible 1 0-0 2, Woodward 2 0-0 4, Houck 1 0-0 2, Snyder 3 0-0 8, Hershey 5 2-4 14, Schmidt 1 0-0 2, Gamble 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 28 8-11 79
Score by Quarters
Bellwood-Antis 17 2 13 16 – 49
Southern Huntingdon 20 14 12 25 – 71
Three-point goals Bellwood-Antis 4 (Smith 2, Hatch 1, Ralston 1)
Southern Huntingdon 7 (Clark 3, Snyder 2, Hershey 2).
