 |
Tigers head into Pac-9 play with win
George Fox men upset 35th-ranked
Ramapo, 82-78
Tigers
let lead slip
away, fall 52-51 |
The NHS girls basketball team is unable to hold onto a
fourth-quarter lead Monday in Eugene |
By B. Scott Anderson, Newberg
Graphic sports editor
E-mail Scott at banderson@eaglenewspapers.com
|
 EUGENE — The Newberg High School girls basketball team dropped
its two opening contests of the Farwest Girls Shootout Monday at South Eugene High School.
Newberg fell to Thurston in the opening round of the tournament. Because of
the snow that hit the area, Corvallis, which was to be Newberg’s opponent, canceled,
forcing the brackets to be redrawn. Newberg’s first game was set for 10:30 a.m. but
the game was pushed back until just after 11 a.m., something that hurt the Tigers, NHS
coach Marianne Funderhide said. The Tigers arrived at the school at 9:15 a.m. and
Funderhide said the long delay hampered her team.
“So, we were here for two hours before we even played,” Funderhide
said. “But the kids were just flat. I think a 40-minute warmup would get them ready
to go, but sometimes I think that takes a little bit out of them, too.”
Funderhide said she thought the combination of Newberg’s slow start and
Thurston not missing shots contributed to the loss.
“We never really got into the flow of the game and Thurston is a good
team,” she said. “They have a lot of attacks. They can attack from the outside,
they hurt us on the offensive boards and they got a lot of second opportunities.”
In the following game, Newberg held a 10-point lead in the second half but
couldn’t hold off the Valley’s League’s North Salem and fell, 52-51.
Newberg fell behind 17-16 after the first quarter, but two buckets by
sophomore Anna Barram put the Tigers ahead 20-17 early in the second quarter. Newberg
built on its lead and eventually held a 31-23 halftime lead.
The Tigers continued to add to their lead early in the second half. With 5:12
remaining in the third quarter, Newberg senior Holly Winter scored a three-point play to
give the Tigers a 38-27 advantage. But that was the last NHS bucket for nearly four
minutes until senior Meghan Leonard canned a 3-pointer with 1:19 remaining to give the
Tigers a 41-34 advantage. But by that time, North Salem had the momentum and began to
build on it in the final quarter.
North Salem’s Heather Ackley hit 1-of-2 free throws with 1:38 left in
the game to give the Vikings a lead they would not relinquish. Ackley hit two more free
throws with 1:09 remaining to give the Vikings a 52-49 advantage.
Newberg got the ball back but couldn’t convert until Leonard came up
with a steal with 50 seconds left, but again the Tigers couldn’t convert. After North
Salem’s Courtney McFadden missed two free throws to keep the NHS hopes alive, Winter
scored on a pass from Leonard to pull the Tigers within 52-51 with eight seconds to go in
the game.
North Salem’s Lucy Walsh missed two free throws with five seconds to go.
Newberg got the ball but couldn’t get a shot off as time expired.
Funderhide said the Tigers lacked intensity.
“We’re not playing with intensity for 32 minutes,” she said.
“We’re just playing in spurts ... We have a 10-point lead or whatever for most
of the game and things are going great, but we just had to take advantage of the things
they gave us and we didn’t. We let them back in the game and then they were turning
the ball over, but then we couldn’t convert.”
When Newberg was down 52-49, the Tigers attempted a high screen to try to
free NHS senior Allison Jensen for a game-tying 3-pointer. But Jensen couldn’t get
free and Newberg had to settle for the bucket from Winter.
“We were running a play out to Alli and we knew they would focus on her
so everybody would be the second option,” she said. “Once they took away Alli
from the outside, it left us with a one-on-one pin with Holly.”
Down by one at the end of the first quarter, the Tigers played well in the
second quarter, outscoring the Vikings 14-6. But Newberg went through a span of four
minutes in the third quarter without a point.
“That’s one of the things we’ve talked about all year ... to
go four minutes without scoring and then to score is not being consistent,”
Funderhide said. “You need to score at least every other possession or every third
possession.
“But they gave us a lot of opportunities. They turned the ball over
three or four times in a row and we just never converted it. I think that hurt us because
every time we don’t score, they keep scoring and edge their way back into it and
that’s what I think happened.
Newberg had a big height advantage and abused the smaller Vikings in the
first half. But the Tigers couldn’t get their short-range shots to fall in the second
half when they needed them.
“That’s that consistency thing again because it’s the same
shot in the first half as it is in the second half,” Funderhide said.
“There’s nothing you can do if it doesn’t go down, but I think we rushed
them a little more in the second half because they were collapsing on us ... .”
Newberg fell to 3-6 overall and 1-2 in the Pac-9 Conference.
Despite the fact that two teams dropped out of the tournament, Funderhide
said she thought the competition, with teams from South Eugene, North Salem, Lakeridge,
Thurston, South Eugene and Mountain View, was one of quality.
“Everyone was saying that this tournament is down, but I don’t
think it is,” she said. “I think there are some quality teams here that are good
competition for us and we’ve seen some things. We’ve seen some halfcourt traps
that we’ve not seen yet this year, which is good, and we’ve seen some full court
man press.” |
|
From Dec. 31,
2003, Newberg Graphic
Click Here to Subscribe |
|
|
