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If a person were to look up at the scoreboard at halftime, they may have thought they were watching a different sport. Both teams scored less than 15 points in the first 16 minutes, before St. Vincent stepped on the gas offensively and defensively in the second half defeating Valle Catholic 40-26 in the semifinal of the Class 2, District 3 tournament Monday at Bloomfield High School.
With the victory the Lady Indians move onto the district championship game against Oran for the second consecutive season today.
St. Vincent coach Gary Poyner is proud of the accomplishment.
“It’s always good to keep playing,” Poyner said “This was a good win for us just because we get to move on, but to be able to be in the district finals back-to-back seasons it says a lot about this group and the program this program is headed.”
Macey Pruett led St. Vincent with 13 points, while Lacey Best and Mary Schwartz each added 10.
The Warriors were led by Hannah Fowler with 10 points, while no other Valle player reached double digits. Fowler was a focal point for the Indians defensively coming into the contest.
“We wanted to try to contain her,” Poyner said. “She’s really good around the basket. The second time we played Valle right after Christmas, she beat us up on the boards. Our game plan was to throw as much traffic around her that we could. I felt that we had success with that.”
That was especially true in the first half as the Warriors made just two shots, one by Fowler, in the first half. Both makes came off of offensive rebound putbacks. St. Vincent jumped out to a 7-1 lead after the first quarter and were up 13-6 at the halftime break.Valle got as close as 8-6 after a putback by Lauren Staab in the second quarter when Poyner called a timeout. St. Vincent closed the first half on a 5-1 run and had the lead as high as 21-8 after a pair of threes by Pruett in the third.
“The reason I called the timeout was something I talked about at halftime,” Poyner said. “We needed to keep our spacing and not force things, and look for diagonal passes. There would be times when we would have a player on the wing come flashing and be open, but we weren’t looking to get it to them.”
That lead jumped to as much as 15 in the third after a bank shot from Megan Lipe and an offensive putback from Best, growing the lead to 29-14. Valle made its only true offensive run in the game with a pair of threes in consecutive possessions, cutting the lead to 30-20 with five minutes left.
St. Vincent ran some clock and hit its free throws to salt away the victory.
The Lady Indians will now face Oran (22-5) in the district championship game and fell to them 72-23 on Feb. 17. Oran defeated Chaffee 64-32 earlier in the night Poyner is looking forward to the tough challenge.
“It will be a good test for us,” Poyner said. “When you reach this point of the season you have to beat good teams to keep advancing. We have to be ready to go.”
