Saturday, November 25, 2000

Raiders pull away in final minutes

By John Montgomery
Sports Writer

BASCOM - Lakota made the start of the Bernie Hohman era at Hopewell-Loudon a rocky one Friday, pressuring an inexperienced, nervous team of Chieftains into mistake after mistake on the way to a 72-58 season-opening girls basketball victory.

The Raiders forced 45 turnovers and limited the Chieftains to just two 3-pointers and a 23-of-58 shooting percentage by using a constant game of running and pressure.

It seemed all too familiar to H-L fans because it was what they'd become accustomed to seeing their team do to others.

Actually, both teams used the same game plan, but it was Lakota's experience that finally gave the Raiders the win.

"They were tired and we were tired. You get in a running game like that and that's going to happen," said Lakota coach Dick Heller. "We had a little more depth off the bench than they had, otherwise it might have been a different ball game."

The Raiders weren't without their miscues, turning the ball over 29 times and hitting on just 29 of their 78 field goal attempts.

"Experience? Sometimes you wonder if our experience really showed on the floor at times," Heller said. "We're trying to do a few things different this year and we've got to work at it, work some of the bugs out of it."

Junior Kristen Lentz seemed to have the bugs worked out of her game early in the year, tossing in 21 points, handing out four assists and swiping six steals for the Raiders.

Meanwhile, the senior trio of Brandy Ritter (18 points), Renee Chaney (15 points, 8 rebounds) and Jenny Widman (10 points) also did well for Lakota, combining for another 43 points.

But even then the win wasn't easy.

The Chieftains trailed 10-1 with under five minutes to go in the first quarter, but rallied back to knot the score 19-all to start the second quarter.

Then, after the Raiders went up 54-39 with just under a minute to go in the third quarter, H-L opened the final period with a 9-0 run to trail by just six with 5:22 to play.

But Lakota found an answer to H-L's rally, using seven of Ritter's points to pull away from the Chieftains in the final minutes to secure the win - the Raiders' first over the Chieftains in five years.

"They battled back. They brought it to within 11, 10 points, eight points. They weren't out of it by any measure of the game," Heller said. "You have to give them a lot of credit. We had them down (by) almost 20 and they didn't give up and they came right back after it."

Senior Holly Thom was a major force in helping the Chieftains battle back, scoring 17 points and grabbing a game-high nine rebounds.

Kara Johnson added 12 more points, Elizabeth Hoover netted 11 points and seven of H-L's 39 rebounds and Kim Norris ended with nine points and eight boards.

But the mistakes and inexperience, and the fact that junior guard Staci Jones is out with a knee injury, were just too much to overcome, according to Hohman.

"I have a lot of inexperience (on the team), so things will improve," said Hohman, who took over the top job at H-L after Doug Reynolds resigned.

"I saw a lot of anxiousness - catch the ball and throw it to a spot instead of a person," he said. "Things we worked on every day just disappeared and we had to stop and remind them.

"And we expected that, we knew it was going to be that kind of start this year," Hohman said.

 A-T HOME PAGE I NEWS I SPORTS I OBITS
WEATHER I CALENDAR