January 28, 2000
Blue Jacket girls shut down Cary
By Ed Fox
Sports Writer
NEW RIEGEL &emdash; There's a good reason why New Riegel is in the thick of the Midland Athletic League title chase.
The Blue Jackets have the second-ranked defense in the league and lived up to that Thursday night by shutting down high-scoring Carey, 48-38.
"Defense is what we talked about afterwards," said New Riegel coach Steve Lucius. "Our offense at times is great and other times is non existant but our defense was there the whole 32 minutes tonight. When you can hold a team like Carey to 38 points I'm really pleased with the defense."
Carey, dropping to 10-4 overall and 5-2 in the MAL, came in scoring 57.3 points a game but was well off that mark. New Riegel remained tied for second in the league with Fremont St. Joe at 5-1 (10-5 overall). Both are one game back of frontrunner Hopewell-Loudon (6-0).
"It was a strange game from the beginning," said Lucius. "It seemed like one team would go on a scoring run and then the other team would come right back and do the same thing."
New Riegel scored the first seven points of the game. Following a 3-pointer by Carey's Holly Brodman the Blue Jackets came back with 12 unanswered points to run their lead to 19-3 and they led by a 19-5 score at the quarter break. Sabrina Reinhart had six of her 11 points in the first quarter and Dawn Faeth also had six of her eight in the opening stanza.
The Blue Jackets were still up by 15 (22-7) following a trey by Leanne Wertz but those were the only points scored by the hosts in the quarter.
Back came Carey on the shoulders of senior Connie Cole who scored nine of her 11 points in the second period as she got the Blue Devils within two (22-20) by intermission.
A rebound bucket by Cole 45 seconds into the third quarter got the Blue Devils even at 22-22 but New Riegel ran off the next 10 points in succession with 5-1 sophomore Kari Reinhart accounting for six of them and the Blue Jackets extended the lead to 14 (37-23) on a layup by Sabrina Reinhart at the buzzer to end the third quarter.
New Riegel extended the lead to 15 (41-26) early in the fourth quarter and was still up by 13 (42-29) before a 9-2 Carey run got the Blue Devils within six (44-38) following two free throws by Brooke Orians with 36 seconds left to play.
That's as close as the Blue Devils would get as Kari Reinhart went 4-for-4 at the charity stripe to extend New Riegel's lead to 10 (48-38) at the end.
Kari Reinhart led the Blue Jackets with 14 points while Sabrina Reinhart and Wertz each had 11 and Faeth followed with eight.
"I was very happy with our rebounding. Sabrina struggled offensively but she did a nice job on the boards (15 rebounds) especially in the second half," said Lucius. "We keyed on (Molly) Zender and really did a nice job defensively on her. We played them in a team camp this summer and she hit seven treys so we knew what she was capable of doing. We also keyed on Brodman but they have a lot of people who can score. We managed to get a hand in their face and they didn't shoot very well.
"Cole hurt us in the second quarter. We went to a 1-3-1 in the second half and assigned our high post to Cole and we took that away from them. Faeth really came to play for us and this is one of her best games. The third quarter was a key for us because we looked terrible in the second period. We really looked good defensively in the third quarter and got the momentum back."
Brodman joined Cole in doubles for Carey, each with 11, while Putnam followed with seven.
"When you're playing against the New Riegel zone and they're trying to take the inside away, you've got to hit from the outside and we just didn't do a good job knocking down our shots," said Carey coach Tom Lee. "Cole did a nice job inside in the second quarter but that was it offensively.
"They do a good job keeping pressure on the ball and we needed good ball movement and it was too slow on the perimeter. We just weren't consistent enough. We were able to take away their outside game but weren't able to slow them down inside."