CHARDON – The saying that “pressure can burst a pipe” has been attributed to at least three people in the basketball world. Whatever the case, it certainly had a lot to do with the demise of the Lakeside girls on Wednesday.
Chardon’s pressure defense helped to force 38 turnovers, 19 via steals, keying a 50-28 win.
“Number one, you come into their house, you’ve got to be up for a battle,” Lakeside coach Rob Livingston said. “Number two, you’ve got to be able to handle the pressure they’re going to throw at you. We did not do that. That’s pretty much been our downfall all year long. So until we start handling that pressure, we’re going to have some troubles.
“That’s something that we need to work at. We’re stressing it. It’s not so much per se physical mistakes; it’s mental mistakes right now that are killing us.”
“I wanted to change the tempo of the game,” Chardon coach Darrell Haskins said. “I felt like we came out maybe a little flat. And when we start pressing, that obviously, makes us a little bit more aggressive and it speeds up the game. The tempo is what we thrive on.”
The Dragons (1-4, 0-3 in the Premier Athletic Conference) didn’t get on the board until Taylor Lampela’s follow with 1:47 left in the first quarter. By then, Chardon (4-1, 3-0) had run off 16 points.
The second period was similar, as Lakeside got its first point in that span when Summer Kelly split a pair of free throws with just less than a minute left. That stopped a 13-0 streak that had pushed the margin to 29-5.
The Hilltoppers expanded the lead to 45-15 on a layup by Katie Collins (16 points, 12 rebounds, 7 steals). The Dragons then outscored them 13-5 over the final 11 minutes. Oddly, all of that came within the following five minutes of play, as no points were tallied by either side in the game’s final six minutes.
“Even though there was a big disadvantage (in the score), we’re trying to stress to our girls that, ‘You know what? I don’t care if it’s a one-point game or a 40-point game; you’ve got to go hard for 32 minutes,’” Livingston said. “I think that we’re starting to go the 32 minutes, but I think that we also need (to handle) the mental mistakes.”
Megan Frye (3 blocked shots) scored half of Lakeside’s points with 14, including three 3-pointers. But aside from she and Arianna Morris (8 points, 4 assists, 5 thefts), no Dragon scored more than two points, as the team hit just 9-of-41 shots (22.0 percent).
“I think that’s our best defensive effort of the season,” Haskins said. “Every game, we try and give them some goals to try to keep teams under. We tried consciously from the start of the season this year to make a little bit more of a commitment to the defensive end.”
“I give them (credit for their defense),” Livingston said. “But a couple times, I don’t think we got into our offensive scheme.
“Our shot selection wasn’t the best tonight. We didn’t let the offense come to us. We didn’t stay in our flow. We pushed it at times. It’ll get better.”
Halle Herringshaw and Lindsey Ferguson had five and four steals respectively for Chardon. Stephanie Bardol put in nine points and Kristen Liggett eight for the Hilltoppers.
Goldman is a freelance writer from South Euclid.
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