By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
ABSECON — Holy Spirit girls basketball coach Dennis Smith has been known to give halftime speeches that are, shall we say, less than flattering when it comes to describing how his team played in the first half. At the 22nd Annual 97.3 ESPN FM Girls Shootout on Sunday afternoon, Smith felt it was time for another of those little talks.
His team apparently got the message that it needed to step up its intensity on the defensive end.
Holy Spirit held just a three-point advantage heading into halftime, 30-27, after Kingsway’s niKiah Lane banked in a running 3-pointer at the buzzer after stealing an inbounds pass. But the Spartans turned up the heat defensively, allowing just four points in the third quarter and six in the fourth to pull away for a 53-37 win over the Dragons.
Spirit held Kingsway without a bucket for nearly five minutes to start the fourth quarter as it built a 47-31 lead.
“We talked about it at halftime. We challenged them at halftime. I said, ‘look, we played man-to-man and you gave up 17 points to Cedar Creek in the first quarter and we had to switch to zone because you didn’t want to play man-to-man,'” Smith said. “We played some man-to-man in the first half (against Kingsway) and gave up 27 points. So I said to them, ‘I’m not going to NOT play man-to-man the rest of the year, so, if you want to play, you better be able to play man-to-man defense right now.’ And they did a much better job (in the second half). Everybody was where they needed to be and they did a good job reading and communicating. It was a much better effort in the second half.”
“We weren’t very happy about that,” Holy Spirit senior Ayanna Jones said of Lane’s buzzer-beating 3-pointer to end the first half. “We knew we had to come out and shut them down. We knew we had to stop penetration to the basket and stop (forward Madeline Hahn) from shooting threes.”
Hahn, Lane and Deja Lawry combined to score 28 points, but most of their damage was done in the first half. Spirit countered with big games from Jones and sophomore Savanna Holt, who nailed four 3-pointers and finished with 14 points. Jones also scored 14 and added nine rebounds and six assists.
“I just felt like I needed to keep shooting,” said Holt, who has helped lead the Spartans to four straight wins.
Holy Spirit (10-4) went on a run late in the third quarter, as Kamryn Englert and Holt sandwiched threes around a drive by Jones to push a five-point to lead to 41-31. Jones drained a 3-pointer late in the third as the lead reached 44-31. Holt finished with four 3-pointers for Spirit and gave the Spartans a big offensive boost.
“She stepped up big time. She’s always shooting threes and working hard in practice,” Jones said of Holt. “She’s one of those players who doesn’t give up. She’s very hard on herself, which can be a good thing. She brings a lot of energy. I don’t know where she gets it from, but she always brings it.”
The biggest key for the Spartans, however, was their renewed focus on defense in the second half. They limited the Dragons to just two made field goals in the final 16 minutes, and held Kingsway without a 3-pointer in the second half.
“In pregame, our coaches told us (Madeline Hahn) was a very good player and liked to shoot, so we had to stop her and go from there. That was our main job,” Jones said.
“Everybody who stepped on the floor made a contribution of some sort, and that’s what we always talk about — we want to have multiple contributions across the board,” Smith added.
Holt said she feels as though the Spartans are beginning to hit their stride.
“I think we’ve gotten a lot better,” she said. “We’re starting to work as a team more and we’re all coming together. We’re just working hard and playing as a team.”
Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays