Without their top two players, Spartans score early for big win.
No Caitlyn Salo? No Brittany Gray?
No problem.
The Bainbridge girls basketball team came out and scored on their first five possessions en route to a 53-25 pasting of the Bishop Blanchet Braves Wednesday night at Paski Gymnasium.
The win puts them back at .500 and leaves them two games behind Holy Names for third place in the Metro League Mountain Division.
“I was really proud” of the team’s effort, head coach Penny Gienger said. “I thought the kids played really hard. They scored a lot and we made it (the offense) work for us. It’s good to see.”
The Spartans were without Salo and Gray who were out because of a stomach flu. Kirsten Michael and Julia Weese started in their place.
Jamie Johnson scored for the Braves on a jumper in the opening minutes, but that’s all the points they got until Alex Weber drained a three near the end of the first quarter.
Michael, Lindsay Bratonia and Weese hit mid-range jumpers for Bainbridge’s first eight points.
Megan Burris worked her way inside for two, while Bratonia made a nice play when she tapped the ball to Anna Wood as two Braves defenders came over to cover her on a inbounds pass.
Defensively, Bainbridge came out and ran a full court man-to-man defense, keeping Blanchet from getting into any kind of rhythm offensively.
The Braves turned the ball over 33 times and shot just 32 percent for the game.
“That (man-to-man) really helped us in the first quarter,” Gienger said. “That got us playing at a pretty good level. We just took it to them and that pretty much took them out for the rest of the night.”
Weber and Cara Shoemaker scored the first four points for Blanchet in the second quarter, but Bainbridge went on a 16-0 run to put the game out of reach.
Burris scored four points while Bratonia spun past two Blanchet defenders to score and Emily Farrar scored all nine of her points in the period.
She knocked down two threes, the second one coming with just two seconds left in the period.
“I don’t think we were sure how it was going to go,” Farrar said of missing their top two players. “It went well in practice, but we needed actual competition” to see how they would handle missing their presence.
Even without Gray and Salo, Farrar still felt the team wouldn’t miss a step.
“We practice with each other every day so we know how good Julia is and we know what everyone can do,” she said. “It’s confidence in our teammates and our bench. There is no dropoff.”
Michael finished with 12 points and four rebounds.
Burris and Bratonia each had eight points.
Bainbridge (6-6, 8-8) play at Eastside Catholic today.
They host the Crusaders next Thursday.
Spartans win four in five days
Playing their fourth game in five days, the Bainbridge boys basketball team struggled through the second half, but got some big defensive plays as they beat Bishop Blanchet 48-37 Tuesday night at Paski Gymnasium.
The win keeps them perfect in Metro League play.
“I felt we started strong and had a good level of intensity going, but the first thing that went was our mental sharpness,” head coach Scott Orness said. “We didn’t have that tonight.”
Bainbridge took the lead early in the first quarter on a three-point shot from Steven Gray and two threes by Caleb Davis.
The Spartans pushed the score to 21-8 behind a nice reverse layup from Gray and a putback from Ben Eisenhardt, but the Braves worked their way back to cut the lead to eight at the half by slowing the tempo way down and working it inside.
In the third quarter the Spartans fought through the Braves’ defense to put their lead back at double digits.
Gibler had six points while Wood had four and Davis and Gray scored two.
Bainbridge kept Blanchet from accomplishing much offensively, holding them to just six points in the period.
“Blanchet’s a very good basketball team and they did a great job of controlling the tempo and limiting our offensive possessions,” Orness said. “Offensively we weren’t as sharp but defensively we were sharp. To hold a team to 37 points is not an easy thing to do.
“They run their offense from 45 seconds to a minute and a half and that’s when teams slip. They’re thinking that we’re tired and all they gotta do is run their stuff and wait for us to make a mistake, but we stayed sharp on defense.”
The Braves were able to knock the score down to eight, but they couldn’t get any farther as they struggled at the line.
But Bainbridge couldn’t put them away until the last minute when Gibler blocked a shot and threw the ball to Davis, who was fouled.
He connected on both his free throws to ice the game.
Gibler was the leading scorer with 15 points and seven blocks.
Davis added 11 points and five rebounds while Wood had nine.
Gray scored just seven points, the first time in his 42 games at Bainbridge that he was held to under 10 points.
The Spartans (12-0, 15-1) travel to O’Dea today at 3 p.m. for a matchup of the top two teams in the state.
