Sabers bounce back with big win

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Joe Marchilena photo Con-Val's Bailey Cohen gets a hand on a shot by Souhegan's Caroline Stone.

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Joe Marchilena photo Souhegan's Bailey Gendron goes in for a layup during Monday's game against Con-Val. The Sabers won 60-28.

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Joe Marchilena photo Con-Val's Bailey Cohen gets a hand on a shot by Souhegan's Caroline Stone.

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AMHERST – The Souhegan High School girls basketball team was in need of a win.

Monday night was the perfect time for Con-Val to come to town.

The Sabers scored the game’s first 30 points and cruised to a 60-28 victory over the Cougars in Division II action, just in time for two of Souhegan’s biggest games of the year. The Sabers were scheduled to host Hollis Brookline (7-0) on Wednesday before traveling to Portsmouth (6-1) on Friday.

And after last Friday’s 58-52 loss to Coe-Brown, a win was something Souhegan (4-2) really needed.

“We needed that,” Souhegan coach Jeremy Faulkner said. “We needed them to have confidence in each other and as a team and have a nice win heading into Wednesday and Friday.”

Faulkner was unhappy with the way the team played against Coe-Brown. With Jane White returning after missing three games with an ankle injury, and with the senior point guard needing just 11 points to reach 1,000 for her career, the Sabers seemed to be out of sorts on both ends of the floor.

Souhegan corrected all of that against Con-Val.

“They came out and it was just a great team effort,” Faulkner said. “We did everything that we talked about and that we worked on Saturday (at practice). We advanced the ball up the floor. We created so much. Great team basketball. Rotations were perfect, the weak side got there when somebody came to double. It was a nice, positive win for us.”

White played most of the game, scoring a game-high 20 points. Although he considered taking her out at times, Faulkner let White stay in the game in an attempt to get her ready for the rest of the week.

“She was completely in control of the game and put everybody where they needed to be,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I thought ‘I gotta take Jane out,’ and I said it to the assistants, but I wanted to keep her in and get her legs under her and get her confidence back.”

Souhegan got some other good injury news as well. Guard Ashley Tighe left early in the second quarter after dislocating her shoulder, but it turned out to be better than it seemed.

“She dislocated it back in the fall and she dislocated it again tonight, but it popped back in on its own,” Faulkner said. “She’ll be ready to go, but it’s going to keep happening until she has surgery.”

Mickenzie Larivee also had 12 points in the win for Souhegan while Tori Forrest added eight and Ceara McNamara had seven.