By Nick Eilerson / Scrimmageplaycva.com contributor
With the first quarter gone by in Wednesday night’s VISAA Division III quarterfinal, the Miller School girls’ varsity basketball team scarcely resembled the dominant force they have been all season long on the hardwood. With the defending state champion Mavericks clinging to a 15-7 lead, it seemed Tandem Friends might make a game of it. Then the second quarter started.
“We kind of just woke up at that point,” Miller forward Kelsey Corcoran said. “The whole part of we’re in states and everything just kind of got us rolling the way we should be.”
Miller coasted the rest of the way, outscoring Tandem 26-3 in the second quarter to grab a 41-10 halftime lead. The Mavericks turned up the heat on the defensive end with suffocating man-to-man pressure, which made even simple tasks like bringing the ball past half-court extremely difficult for Tandem point guard Crystal Savavia. The Badgers ended the night with more turnovers than points, finishing with 25 giveaways that played a major part in their 61-19 loss.
Miller’s Ashley Bowles played an instrumental part in her team’s second quarter turnaround, as she knocked down several long-distance jumpers en route to 13 first half points. Bowles’ hot shooting combined with the bruising interior duo of Corcoran and Ashleigh Claybrooks to create an effective inside-out offensive approach that left Tandem scrambling.
“[Bowles] was due for a game like this,” said Miller coach James Braxton. “She’s struggled with her shot a little bit and in the meantime everybody else has kind of picked her up, so I was expecting for her to have a break out game.”
Claybrooks finished with 12 points, while Corcoran ended with a game-high 16 points, one more than Bowles’ 15. More impressive than the Mavericks’ scoring, though, was their defense, where even bigger players like Corcoran and Claybrooks came away with several steals as a result of unrelenting pressure. As Braxton asserted after the game, Miller will need to carry that ball-hawking mentality into the tournament’s later stages, where the going will only get tougher.
“We’re just going to keep doing what we’ve been preaching all year, which is defending,” Braxton said. “That’s where we’re going to win games. We’re going to score, but if we defend and we hold other teams to minimum points, then we’ll be in good shape.”
The Mavericks move on to Friday’s state semifinals at Benedictine.
