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Raider girls devastate Battlefield 80-29
Cedar Run District teams take note: Stonewall Jackson means business.
The girls basketball team this season not only has stayed perfect through the first half of the season but started out 2008 with a bang too, taking out their district’s three next-best teams in succession.
Battlefield (10-4 overall, 3-3 district) was the latest casualty for the Raiders (14-0, 6-0), losing 80-29 in Manassas last Friday. The 51-point victory marked the third time this season Stonewall has toppled an opponent by at least 50 points.
One of the reasons for the lopsided scores has been the decision by coach Nsonji White to keep his defense applying full-court presses regardless of the score.
“Should I tell my girls not to play in the passing lanes?” White rhetorically asked after the Friday game.
Though the Raiders took a 36-14 lead into the locker room at halftime, their defense did not waste a second applying pressure in the second half. Stonewall forced a jump-ball 10 seconds after Battlefield’s first inbound pass and, once Caitlyn Richbourg hauled in a defensive rebound for the Bobcats, senior guard-forward Gwen Washington stole the ball and put it right back up in the hoop for SJHS.
“We always press,” said Washington, who was recognized after the game for breaking the Stonewall school record for most career points with 1,287. “We won’t probably ever come out of press.”
Battlefield did not manage to score its first open-court field goal in the third quarter until junior guard Selina Mann (16 points) tossed in a lay up over senior Amber Carter with 3:38 left on the clock. Battlefield’s next and subsequently last third quarter field goal came after sophomore center Annie Jones (4 points) took a pass from Mann and pushed it through the hoop with 1:07 remaining.
“Our confidence definitely lowered after we started turning the ball over a little bit,” commented Richbourg.
“Their traps were so hard to get past,” added Battlefield senior forward Gracie Dryden. “I think we’re not used to playing that type of speed and when they would come at us and just trap us automatically, and we would have two people on us, I think a lot of us just kind of went into this miniature panic attack and kind of sat there, froze for a second, which is another thing we could (improve on) when we want to keep up.”
Stonewall ended up outscoring Battlefield 20-5 in the third quarter and 24-10 in the fourth. Washington and sophomore guard Kyani White topped the Raiders’ offense by earned 18 points each while junior guard Samantha Jordan chipped in 13 and Carter put up nine.
Carter was largely responsible for the defensive pressure applied to Mann throughout the game and said Stonewall wanted to force the junior to frequently pass the ball.
“Selina was the main player,” Carter said. “If we could shut her down, then the rest of the game would come to us.”
White reckoned he may hear a word or two from various schools’ athletic directors about playing his starters late in the game while pressing but said that when Battlefield coach Eric McCaslin put his starters in the game, White would bring in his starters.
“If we weren’t capable of being successful, then I would get frustrated,” McCaslin said of the loss.
The Bobcats actually outscored Stonewall 5-3 at the start of the second quarter and had cut the Raiders 18-6 lead after the first quarter to just a nine point margin.
After the 4:40 mark though, the Raider offense walloped Battlefield to the tune of a 15-2 run before the halftime buzzer sounded.
“Positives are usually hard to find but, that second quarter, I think we found that if we move the ball well (and) we’re patient, we can score,” said McCaslin, adding that the combination of patience and well-placed passes is the key to keeping up against a high-caliber team like Stonewall.
The Raiders are at home tonight against Osbourn while Battlefield hosts Culpeper in Haymarket.
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