Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Villa Maria hands Jags their first setback
Fast-starting Villa Maria hands Garnet Valley its first loss
A few minutes after the Villa Maria Academy basketball squad handed Garnet Valley its first loss of the season, 5846, at the 13th Annual Hoops for Hope Classic Saturday, Jaguar head coach Joe Woods reflected on the Hurricanes’ force.
“Villa Maria is a lot like us — they are fast, they have good size and they could shoot the ball,” said Woods, whose squad is now 17-1 (12-0 in the Central League). “A lot of times, our offense is an inside game, but Villa could match up with us and they got clean blocks on our bigs. You’ve got to give Villa Maria and their coaching staff a lot of credit; they were ready for us and they jumped us early.”
Villa Maria (14-3) got out to a 14-0 lead just three minutes into the game. Led by 6-foot-1 junior forward Paige Lauder and 6-foot senior forward Abby Walheim, the Hurricanes blocked several shots in the first quarter. In addition, the Hurricanes’ energetic defense kept triggering Garnet Valley turnovers (a dozen in the first half) on the University of the Sciences court.
“I’m thrilled with our defense today,” said Villa Maria head coach Kathy McCartney. “Our kids are starting to buy into the fact that our defense is the jumping off point for our offense. It gets us going in transition, it takes the other team out of their rhythm. Their bigs were setting ball screens and we were jumping out and hedging really well on those ball screens so they couldn’t get what they wanted off it. Garnet Valley is a really solid basketball team, very well-coached and they know what they want to run. We really took them out of their rhythm today.”
Lauder, who scored eight first-half points and grabbed eight rebounds, said, “We knew we had to get out fast - Garnet Valley is a really good team, so we had to bring momentum on defense, we knew that playing good defense would create good offense.”
“We got off the bus ready to play today,” said McCartney. “I don’t have an explanation for it, I’ve been coaching girls basketball for a long time, and if I could bottle that, I’d be all-world.”
Garnet Valley, trailing 14-0 with 5:00 left in the first quarter, began a sizable run of its own, as a pair of 6-foot senior forwards, Emily McAteer (the program’s all-time leading scorer) and Brianne Borcky, combined for 10 points to cut the Hurricanes’ lead to 14-10. But the Jaguars got no closer, and Walheim hit a three from the top of the key just before the first quarter ended to give Villa Maria a 17-10 lead.
In the second quarter, the Hurricanes held Garnet Valley to just three points and held a 25-13 halftime lead. In the first half, the dynamic duo of Walheim and Lauder had all but four of Villa Maria’s points.
“The key today was talking and staying active on defense, and running in transition after making a good defensive stop,” said Walheim. “Garnet Valley has a lot of good shooters.”
“We knew that this was the first time we would be facing a good matchup height-wise,” said Lauder. “We wanted to key on closing out on shooters, and stopping the dribble drive.”
In the third quarter, Villa Maria junior guard Myla Warley found her scoring touch, connecting on four field goals, the last one a trey from the right side after a lengthy series of Hurricane passes to give her team a 41-26 lead.
“Myla is our X factor,” said McCartney. “She’s playing with a little more confidence, and she went to the basket really well today.”
Meanwhile, McAteer was in the thick of things for Garnet Valley, scoring 10 points in the third quarter to keep the Jaguars within striking distance (she finished the game with 19 points). Early in the fourth quarter, when Borcky hit from midrange, the Hurricanes’ lead was cut to 4436.
Woods said, “I give my team credit for coming back after having all those turnovers in the first quarter, we battled and basically played them even the rest of the way.”
In the next few minutes, Villa’s defense tightened and Walheim scored three consecutive baskets underneath to give the Hurricanes a 52-36 lead. Walheim, who earlier this month became the fifth Villa Maria player to score 1,000 career points, tallied 27 points Saturday and collected nine rebounds for the Hurricanes, who are 14-3 with five regular season games to play.
“I like this gym, and it was cool to play here today against a difficult team like Garnet Valley,” said a smiling Walheim.
Lauder said, “I’m glad we got to play Garnet Valley - they’re a team [in 6A] that we’ll never get to play in Districts or States, but this is a good game to get under our belts and give us confidence.”
On the Garnet Valley side, Woods saw Saturday’s contest as a growth opportunity for the Jaguars.
“It was a good learning experience for us - Villa Maria is an excellent team and I think they’ll go far in the playoffs,” said Woods. “At this point of the season, when we’re looking to Central League playoffs, district playoffs and state playoffs hopefully, playing a team of this caliber is only going to help us. We’ll look over the film of today’s game and see how we can correct our mistakes and get better. If there’s such a thing as a good loss, this was a good loss [smiles].
“Sometimes players can get the feeling when they’re undefeated, and it’s natural, that, ‘Hey, we’re good, we’re really good and we beat a lot of teams by a lot of points,’ and it’s good to get the feeling from the other side, because you only get better when you have setbacks. We know we can do better, and later this season we’ll be playing teams that are as good as Villa Maria, if not better.”