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Bricks mount up for Battlefield in OT loss to Potomac
Making shots is to basketball what eating food is to the body: you can only last so long without doing it.
Failing to do so spelled out the fate for the Battlefield varsity girls basketball team Monday night in Haymarket as the Bobcats fell in overtime to Potomac, 45-42.
“It’s hard to play good defense for a long, long time when you’re not seeing the offense every now and then,” said Bobcats coach Eric McCaslin. “Mentally, the defense starts becoming harder to play when you’re feeling discouraged.”
Trailing by six points at the start of the second half, Battlefield missed its first four field goal attempts and both of its free throws while the Panthers grew their lead to 11. McCaslin stopped the bleeding with a timeout call 1:17 into the third quarter.
“I wanted to exploit Selena [Mann] and Annie [Jones] on one wing and try to go up by two (with) big scorers inside and out,” he said after the game.
That set up pick-and-rolls created by the center Jones and point guard Mann, the first Battlefield basketball player ever to receive an NCAA Division I-A athletic scholarship for basketball, leaving shooting guard Amanda Windsor all alone on the outside as her teammates drew inside coverage.
In succession, she drained consecutive 3-pointers from both sides of the arc.
“The confidence, once I shoot one, it just keeps going,” said Windsor. “So, the momentum is what you need in the game. Without it, it’s not really going to work as well.”
Potomac coach Mike Wilson said his team’s defensive positioning gave Battlefield open looks.
“And they hit those open shots, you know? So at that point, I was just saying that we couldn’t give up any more open shots,” said Wilson.
The Bobcats ultimately closed out the third quarter with a 13-4 run that tied the game.
Oddly enough, the points were not coming from Mann (4 points), the Bobcat girls’ all-time leading scorer.
“I didn’t really see her attacking very much tonight as much as, you know, I had seen her last year,” said Wilson.
Mann, whose points all came from the foul line, instead played the role of a true point guard as opposed to the shooting role she is generally asked to do for Battlefield.
“And she released pressure for the rest of us guards and for the post,” said Windsor. “If she doesn’t score points, then she helps otherwise offensively or helps defensively.”
Windsor sank her third 3-pointer of the night in the fourth quarter, giving Battlefield its largest lead at 30-27. A 3-point response by Kyana Jacobs (15 points) and a bucket by Racquel Hayes (11 points) reclaimed an advantage for Potomac, but Windsor erased it again by drilling an NBA-length 3-pointer from the top-left side, putting the home team up again by one point.
Successful free throws by Potomac and by Battlefield knotted the score, setting up Windsor with one more chance for heroics. Facing double coverage, she heaved up the ball from the left side of the arc as time expired, only for the rock to bounce off the back of the rim and on to the floor, sending the game into overtime.
Like they did at the start of the second half, Potomac came out hot and Battlefield did not as the Panthers opened with another five-point run. A triple by Taylor Cordle (8 points) – her second of the night – closed the gap, but forced fouls allowed Potomac to tally up foul shots, eventually creating a six-point lead with less than a minute remaining.
“Well, I thought that in that little span where we lost the lead, I think the girls just felt like they shouldn’t have given that lead up. I thought that [when] we got the extra period, we got our second wind,” said Wilson.
Even another 3-pointer, this time by Kayla Iannarelli (6 points), came too late as Battlefield had to send Jacobs to the line again with 10 seconds on the clock. She converted her first attempt, but despite a Bobcat rebound on the second, the final shot of the game by Iannarelli missed from the top of the 2-point key, ending the match.
“I think our defense just kind of fell a little bit and, I mean, we need to get the ball back and some of the steals,” said sophomore Stephanie Figgins, who made her starting debut as two routine players both had to sit out.
In the end, the game boiled down to one concept: making hoops.
“They fall some nights and they don’t fall other nights,” said Windsor (12 points). “There’s nothing you can really do about it. But we got the momentum eventually. We just didn’t end up coming out with the win.”
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