By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SILVERTON, Ore.– The Lebanon Girls Basketball team didn’t back down to Silverton, they rose to the occasion on Friday night in Mid-Willamette Conference action.
Their defense created a nightmare of sorts for the Foxes. They swarmed. They flew around. They read-and-reacted perfectly as they were the aggressors in this game. The Warriors opened the game leading 8-0 cause of that defense. And when the Foxes responded, eventually taking a 19-17 lead in the second quarter, the Warriors responded.
By halftime they led 25-21 and that lead reached 30-21 early in the second half. All stemming from that defense and them being able to capitalize on the offensive side of the court. That style of play was just who they are.
“This is the fourth year of running that system and it’s really predicated on the girls showing up, flying around, getting after it and being able to be aggressive and take chances,” describes Lebanon Head Coach Andrew Evans
“They’re really aggressive and they’re really fast, so it’s really hard to practice against because we don’t have players like them who are really long. I think for us, we were letting them speed us up and in the second half we needed to realize that we can slow down, take our time and find our shots. Not let them dictate what we are taking,” adds Silverton’s Allie Mansur.
Silverton locked in once more. They paced out that Warrior defense and built a 49-39 lead on Lebanon by the fourth quarter. There was 6:40 left in the contest at this point. But the Warriors had one last run in them.
In about a three minute span on the game-clock, Lebanon stormed back into the game. A 12-0 run to take a 52-49 lead on Silverton at the Foxes home court.
“That’s the biggest thing that we preach all the time is that basketball is a game of runs and it’s hard not to pay attention when you’re up or when you’re down and stuff like that. But you just have to trust the process and just continue to do it,” said Evans. “The process didn’t work out for us tonight, but you can’t let any run affect what we do and we continue to play the game of basketball. That’s all the game is, a game of runs.”
There was 3:35 left in the game, momentum was on the side of Lebanon up by three.
That was, until the Foxes went on a 6-0 run to regain the lead with 2:01 remaining. Mansur hit the go-ahead three going into a timeout. It seemed to be just enough of a swing to get Silverton back on track as they were able to close out a hard-fought 60-55 home victory over the Warriors on this day.
“We just had to know that we had to get stops and make sure that we didn’t turn the ball over like we did in the first half. Just keep playing solid defense and being calm,” said Chloe Kuschnick on closing out the game.
Kuschnick led the Foxes with 15 points, Ashlyn Davisson contributed another 14 for Silverton, who will play Central on Tuesday. Hazel Pepperling led Lebanon with 20 points and Piper Sewell contributed another 12 points in the game for the Warriors. Lebanon will host Corvallis on Tuesday.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
