Cavs run over Bulldogs

Friday, December 18, 2009

Photo by David Beach Bedford's Casey Levis tries to get by Hollis/Brookline's McHale Perkins during Tuesday's game in Bedford. The Cavaliers won, 84-49.

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Photo by David Beach Hollis/Brookline's Kelly Morgan lets a shot go during Tuesday's win over Bedford.

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Photo by David Beach Bedford's Casey Levis tries to get by Hollis/Brookline's McHale Perkins during Tuesday's game in Bedford. The Cavaliers won, 84-49.

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BEDFORD – Neither Bob Murphy nor Scott Sarsfield expected what they saw at Bedford High School on Tuesday.

Only one of them saw something he liked.

After playing a close game for most of the first quarter, the Hollis/Brookline girls basketball team exploded on offense in the second quarter and clamped down on defense in the second half to defeat Bedford 84-49 in the Class I opener for both teams.

Kelly Morgan led all scorers with 18 points for H/B while Julia Stopera had 17 points and 14 rebounds. Sultana Svirk added 13 markers and Katie Stopera chipped in with 10 for the Cavaliers. Bedford got 15 points from Casey Levis and Katherine Prothro added 13 points.

The Bulldogs trailed just 16-14 after a layup by Levis with less than a minute to go in the first quarter, but the Cavs scored the final six points of the quarter and the first four of the second to go up by 12. Bedford would get no closer than nine for the rest of a back-and-forth first half. The second half was all H/B, as the Cavs outscored the Bulldogs, 38-15, in a defensive performance that had Murphy pleased.

“We didn’t give up much in the second half,” he said. “We haven’t really been shooting well lately, but our defense has been playing well. I’m pretty surprised about our offense. We held our own in the first quarter and we just started picking it up.”

What made the output so surprising to Murphy was the number of players the Cavs had in foul trouble in the first half. Even with every player getting on the floor, H/B didn’t miss a beat.

“All our major players were sitting on the bench for a lot of the first half,” said Murphy, who is in his first year at H/B. “There’s so many times, if you get three of your key players in foul trouble, you have to take a chance and maybe leave one or two of them out there. The kids that went in did the job. We didn’t slow down, we accelerated. We’ve got to stay out of foul trouble, but we have the depth that we didn’t slow down.”

Bedford’s defense certainly couldn’t find away to slow H/B. The Bulldogs tried to apply full-court pressure, but the Cavs were able to repeatedly beat the press.

“They were breaking it, maybe not consistently, but they were in the first half. Instead of making corrections, we continued to fall into that trap,” Bedford coach Sarsfield said. “We didn’t get the people back when we needed to. We were pressuring the ball, but not aggressively enough. We just continued to fall further into a hole.”

Even though the Bulldogs only made 8-of-14 free throws in the second quarter, it was enough to keep them within striking distance. But for the game, Bedford was only 16-of-30 from the line.

The Bulldogs scored the first basket of the second half on a field goal by Nicole Marinelli, cutting the Cavs’ lead to 10 points. But it was all H/B from there, as the Cavs went on a 15-2 run, with seven different players scored points during that stretch.

“It’s a nice thing for a coach to have, to be deep to the end of the bench,” Murphy said. “These kids worked real hard.”

For Bedford, it’s clear to Sarsfield what the team needs to work on.

“Our defense in general,” he said. “It’s a full-court, pressure kind of defense, but it’s also half-court and help defense. We’re lacking a little. We know in our heads what we want to do, but we’re not doing it right now. We’ve got to keep working on it. We were nervous tonight and I think it effected us a little bit. We never seemed to shake it.

“It surprises me where we ended up, but at the same time, I wasn’t surprised by how solid they were and how aggressive they were.”

H/B plays at 6:30 p.m. on Friday at Con-Val, while Bedford heads to Plymouth on Friday.