BOB ETTINGER
ASHTABULA TOWNSHIP — Once Lakeside’s Arianna Morris finds the wave, she’ll ride it all the way to the shore. She might even throw in a trick or two along the way.
Morris found quite a curl and performed a few stunts in leading the Dragons past Edgewood, 48-35, Monday night in a non-conference contest at Edgewood.
The junior guard scorched the nets for 19 points and added five assists to have a hand in more than half of the Dragons’ points.
“Really?” Morris asked, “19 points? Cool. I don’t pay attention to points. I was trying to build my confidence. On the bus ride here, Coach (Rob Livingston) was telling us to focus. So I decided to step it up.
“I was going to shoot it and take it to the basket. If I got fouled, I got fouled and I’d go to the line.”
“That’s big,” Livingston said. “She’s struggled the last couple of games. It’s nice to see her come through. She accepted the challenge and played a good game tonight. She’s lightning quick.
“She made good adjustments and saw the gaps and lanes and took it to the basket. She distributed the ball well.”
Morris found a nice mix between driving the lane for layups and hitting jumpers. She hit on a pair of 3-pointers, made four layups and scored five points from the free throw line.
“Sometimes, she’s hit or miss (from the outside),” Livingston said. “She made her first shot tonight. When she makes that first shot, she’s a different player. She was scoring from the inside, from the outside and getting other people involved.
“She didn’t force the issue at all. She just took the open shots.”
Trailing by two early in the fourth quarter, Morris sparked the Dragons (5-10, 1-7 in Premier Athletic Conference) to a 14-0 run.
She connected on a pair of free throws to knot the score, 32-32, with 5:52 remaining in the game. She followed that 21 seconds later by taking a defensive rebound all the way down to the other end for a layup and a 34-32 Lakeside advantage with 5:31 left.
Taylor Lampela followed Morris’ lead and scored on a putback, Sallie Christian made a free throw and Summer Kelly connected on a trey to put Lakeside up eight, 40-32. Christian made two more charity tosses and Megan Frye hit a jumper to close out the run.
When all was said and done, the Dragons held a 44-32 edge on the Warriors (6-12) with 1:23 left on the clock.
“That was intensity, that’s what that was,” Edgewood coach Chris Juncker said. “I told (the team) before the game. I said, ‘We’ve got to be intense from beginning to end. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what we’ve got to do to win. If we don’t (do it), we’ll lose.’
“That’s what we did and we lost. We lost our intensity. We lost our focus. We have two more games left and if we don’t bring the intensity, we’ll lose those, too.
“We didn’t get leadership. We had zero leadership tonight. When we lose our intensity on the floor, we’ve got to have somebody step up. I’ve only got five timeouts. I can’t call timeout every time it happens. We’ve got to have somebody step up and do something.”
Christian tallied six points and led the Dragons with 11 rebounds and four steals. Dianna Moore connected on a 3-pointer in scoring six points, hauled down 10 boards and made a steal.
Chelsey Miller paced the Warriors with 12 points and four steals, McKenzie Koman scored nine points and had eight rebounds and Jessica Reed scored six points.
