January 28, 2000

Senecas lose to St.Joe

By Dave Feltner
Sports Editor

There's a scene late in the movie "Bull Durham" where the Tim Robbins character explains a theory on winning and losing.

He articulates how sometimes when you win, you actually lose. And sometime when you lose, you actually win. And sometimes it rains.

The latter may have nothing do with basketball, but Calvert girls coach Jim Kuhn can relate to the rest of the spiel.

His Senecas may have lost to Fremont St. Joe, 66-61, Thursday night, but at least, according to Kuhn, they created something for the future.

"You know what? I'll take some losses like this and build off of them," Kuhn said. "What can I say? We tell the kids to run plays, and they haven't done that all year. Tonight, we played four quarters of basketball. We looked for our strength; we looked inside; we made adjustments. We saw some things tonight that we haven't seen all year."

Kuhn wasn't just babbling, either. His thoughts mirrored those of St. Joe coach Gary Geller. In fact, before reporters could ask Geller a question, he started in.

"Let's start with Calvert," he said. "I thought they played a hell of a game. Jimmy told them at the beginning that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain and to go out and play hard. And that's exactly what they did. They basically outplayed us. We beat them on the scoreboard, but I think that's the only place we beat them."

Not quite true. There were two other areas the Streaks (12-2, 5-1 MAL) got the best of the Senecas (9-6, 4-3).

First and foremost the Streaks, as they say, shot the lights out, sinking a scorching 53 percent (29 of 55) from the field.

The second area stemmed directly from the first. That was Brea Busold. The MAL's fifth-leading scorer scored 24 points on 12 of 17 shooting from the field.

Her 71 percent shooting looks impressive, but really there was nothing to it. Busold repeatedly found herself free under the basket and rarely, if at all, took a shot from more than two feet away from the hoop.

"We lost track of her," Kuhn said. "Twenty-four points, you can't explain that. That's just the defense not being there. You look at their shot chart and it looks like a machine gun right underneath the basket. But she's a good ballplayer, and you have to give her credit. That's just good ol' hard-workin' basketball. But, defensively, we have to be more aggressive and stop that."

Busold's biggest stretch came in the second quarter when she hit all five of her attempts from the field.

Calvert had a 14-13 lead at the first stop, but Busold's effort gave the Streaks a 37-29 halftime advantage.

Calvert climbed back and finally caught St. Joe with 4:46 left in the game.

Two minutes earlier the Senecas trailed, 56-48, but Andrea Weber and Carrie Weber sank a pair of foul shots each, Sabrina Seitz split a pair and Laura Kuhn stuck a putback to knot things at 56.

Calvert went cold from there, and St. Joe regained the lead for good on two easy buckets by Busold and another from Rachel Babione.

St. Joe didn't exactly seal it at the line &emdash; the missed five in a row in the final 40 seconds &emdash; but Calvert managed just five points in the final four minutes.

Hillary Hepp came off the bench to score 14 points for Calvert. Seitz also had 14, while Andrea Weber and Kristen Kastner (eight rebounds) scored 10 apiece.

Busold got plenty of backing from Heberling (11), Erin Raubenolt (10) and Babione (10).

"We got the looks we wanted at the end; we made contact with the rim, they just didn't fall," coach Kuhn said. "I'm proud of these girls because they battled all night. They got their confidence level where the need it. They grew up tonight. They proved to themselves they can do what they want as a team. This is something we can build on."

Sometimes when you lose...