Cleveland outlasts Bainbridge in varsity girls hoops

Published 10:50 am Monday, January 18, 2016

The Bainbridge High girls varsity basketball team came up short in their first home court outing of the new year Friday against the visitors from Cleveland High.

Ten points short, to be precise.

The final score was 56-46, and, though the Spartans led initially — in what BHS Head Coach Nicole Hebner called the team’s best showing of the season so far — the island squad spent much of the contest playing catch-up.

Bainbridge jumped out in front at first but was outscored by three points (13-10) by the end of the first quarter. They fell two points short (14-12) again in the second, ending the half down 27-22.

The Spartans came out big in the second half and outscored the Eagles for the only time in the game in the third quarter (10-8). The fourth saw massive gains for the visitors and the home team remained unable to mount a response (21-14).

Spartan points powerhouse junior guard Taylor Tyle led the team on the board with 16 points scored throughout the night.

Kiera Havill managed 12 points, and Paulina Bredy, Carly Lant and Katie Usellis each put up four.

Despite the loss, Hebner said that the Spartans had performed admirably and were looking much improved even since just their previous outing.

“We played really well,” Hebner said. “That was our best game of the year in numerous regards. Primarily, we just played really, really well against a very good team.”

Hebner said she was especially happy to see the squad maintain a continuous offensive press throughout the full game.

“Overall I’m just really proud of the effort,” she added, allowing that Cleveland was a historically high quality team that, even when the Spartans did outpace them in the third, was not prone to panic.

“They’re so athletic and obviously very, very well-coached,” she said. “I think theyhave been in this situation numerous times. I think they play a lot of basketball, and have always played a lot of basketball, and I think they just kind of calmed down a little bit and hit some shots and found the open player.”

The loss at home left the Spartans with an overall season record of 2-7 (1-4 conference) and the fifth spot in the Metro Mountain Division standings.

Hebner said that the team’s game under the net and rebounding skills had been improving as hoped.

“We really struggled rebounding on Wednesday against a very physical, yet not very skilled, Franklin team,” she explained. “That’s all kind of desire and heart and so we worked on toughness and physical drills yesterday in practice to kind of get us prepared for today.

“That’s our whole goal,” she added. “To play hard. You should walk away from every competition feeling like you left everything out on the court and until today, we had played some tough games, but this was out best effort.”