AUGUSTA – After two regular season losses to Hall-Dale, the last thing the Winthrop girls’ wanted to do was fall behind early.

In both regular season affairs, the Ramblers dug themselves a first-quarter hole and couldn’t recover. So in Tuesday’s Western Class C quarterfinal, Winthrop hoped for a better start, but didn’t get it.

Hall-Dale burst out to a 23-6 lead in the first eight minutes and went on to win 63-57.

“We got behind and we got in foul trouble,” said Winthrop coach Lonney Steeves. “From there on out the game must have been pretty even.”

No. 10 Winthrop (11-9) made numerous runs in the game trying to wipe out the Hall-Dale lead but the early deficit was too great.

“The first half I thought we played pretty well,” said Hall-Dale coach Sam Hayes. “We’re still an awful young team. So we try to put teams away but we bounce around like a yo-yo.”

Hall-Dale’s size inside proved too much for Winthrop to handle. The No. 2 Bulldogs (17-2) dominated the paint, outrebounding the Ramblers by nearly a two-to-one margin. Winthrop couldn’t keep pace early as the Bulldogs controlled the defensive boards and often turned a defensive stop into a transition basket.

“They killed us on the weakside of the boards,” said Steeves. “It didn’t matter who was in there. It was everybody. They just came in there and crashed on the weakside. We just didn’t get the job done there.”

Hall-Dale’s Chelsey Dionne led all scorers with 25 points and 15 rebounds. Caitlyn Laflin added 14 points. Winthrop got 19 points and 10 rebounds from Emilie Knight while Amanda Garwood played a nice game and finished with 11.

“Dionne can play,” said Hayes. “Certainly Laflin and Dionne are very very good players. Both can go off for 25 or 30. It’s obviously they both rebound well and shoot pretty well.”

With the game tied 4-4, Hall-Dale broke the game open with a 15-0 run en route to a 23-6 lead after one. Dionne finished with 11 of her points in the opening quarter.

Garwood helped spark the Ramblers with seven points during a 9-2 run in the second quarter. The Ramblers got within 10 as Hall-Dale shot 1-for-13 to start the quarter, but Hall-Dale maintained the lead. Hall-Dale turned the ball over five times in the first half, taking away Winthrop’s hopes to generating offense off its defense.

“We were just trying to find ways to score by pressing and playing up tempo,” said Steeves. “We were able to get that going a little bit, but the hole was too deep.”

The Ramblers made a run in the third and closed the gap to 40-31 with 2:58 left on a Knight 3-point play, but Hall-Dale ran off six straight points on scores by Heather St. Pierre, Katy Brown and Brittany Bourgeois.

Winthrop made one final run in the closing minutes. Six straight points by Anna Warner got the Ramblers within 57-50 with 1:18 left. Winthrop got as close as 59-53 with 38 seconds to play, but ran out of time.

“Every run we made they answered in the third quarter,” said Steeves. “We kind of put a stop to them in the fourth. They didn’t answer anything we did in the fourth but it was too late.”

kmills@sunjournal.com

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