Sarah Tabb wasn’t expecting another 44-point victory Friday night when her StoneBridge team faced Portsmouth Christian for the second time this season.
“We knew we could beat them,” said the Cavaliers’ junior forward. “But we knew it wouldn’t be like last time because they were at home and this was a conference game.”
And it wasn’t.
StoneBridge only won by 56-37 this time around, a far cry from the 72-28 pounding the Cavs handed the Patriots in the consolation game of the Bishop Sullivan Holiday Invitational last month.
StoneBridge coach Barry Rowe spent a fair amount of time planting “don’t look past them” thoughts in his team’s head over the past few days.
“In the Bishop Sullivan tournament we played about as well as we could and they obviously struggled,” he said after the Cavaliers completed the first half of Metro Conference play with a 7-0 record and improved their overall mark to 15-2. “This is also a big rivalry game, so I knew Portsmouth Christian would play better.”
While StoneBridge didn’t take anything for granted, it didn’t take charge against the out-manned Patriots (4-2, 8-8) until early in the second quarter. The Cavaliers didn’t go ahead to stay until Tabb converted a pair of free throws for a 13-12 lead.
Once out front, StoneBridge poured it on. The visitors outscored Portsmouth Christian by 18-3 in the second period with the help of three-pointers from Caitlyn Unsworth, Kaitlin Walsh and Tabb. The lead reached 21 points in the third period before a struggling Kristen Blalock (game-high 20 points) finally discovered her missing shot and scored 13 points in the last nine minutes to keep it from getting worse.
While one-sided, this was far from a perfect outing for the Cavaliers. Unofficial stats had them committing an astounding 26 turnovers.
“Ahhh, we’re working on that,” said Tabb. “Our point guard (Kara McCormick) graduated last year.”
StoneBridge also shot just 34 percent from the floor despite nailing seven threes.
“Truthfully, we didn’t’ shoot the ball real well,” said the 6-1Tabb, who finished with 13 points, 10 rebounds and three blocks. “And I was a little worried in that first quarter. But this is a team that knows how to step it up, and we did.”
Rowe added that what folks saw Friday is typical StoneBridge.
“We win ugly,” he said. “We either turn it over, or we score. Portsmouth Christian had something to do with it, though. They played a real physical man defense. It wasn’t like we had a bunch of layups the way we did in the first game.”
Unsworth, a talented freshman, finished with 12 points and Ashlea Foster contributed nine points as seven Cavaliers scored.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
