LEWISTON – Edward Little coach Jim Ladd felt good about his team going into halftime of Wednesday night’s game with Lewiston with a three-point lead, but something was nagging at him.
“I knew coming into halftime that we’d have to match their intensity (in the second half) because I knew (Lewiston) coach (Jim) Hood wasn’t very happy with his team’s play in the first half,” Ladd said. “When you get a team down, you’ve got to keep them down, and we didn’t do a very good job of doing that.”
Ladd’s concerns turned to reality as Lewiston did a great job of executing its full-court trap, forcing 22 turnovers and limiting the Red Eddies to eight points in the second half in a 48-23 win Wednesday night.
Mallory Long led the Blue Devils (11-7) with 13 points, while Caitlin Anthoine added 12 and Danielle Willey eight. Brittney French paced the Red Eddies (4-14) with 10 points.
“We basically just knew that we didn’t want to lose to EL,” said Anthoine. “As a senior, I know I didn’t want to lose and it’s pretty much our last season game. Being down to EL, we just knew we had to pick up both offensively and defensively.”
“We knew that if we shook up their offense, our defense and our offense would just come with that,” she added. “Putting on our press, that’s basically where we got a lot of our points from in the second half.”
The win assured Lewiston of a home game in the Class A prelims, which will be played next week. EL needed a win and help to get in the 14th and final slot.
“Hopefully, we’ve set the tone for our next game, which I think will be Hampden,” Hood said. “It’s important to play that first one at home.”
EL set a low-scoring tone by limiting Lewiston to 4-of-25 shooting (16 percent) in the first half. The Eddies led the entire half behind some strong defense and good inside play by French.
“We had the game where we wanted. We’d shut (Kelsey) Varney down,” Ladd said. “But we missed a lot of easy shots. We should have had a a 10- or 12-point lead. You can’t give a tournament team like that too many chances and we did.”
The Devils made a lot of their own chances in the third quarter, trapping EL in its backcourt and patrolling the passing lanes to force turnover after turnover. They got lay-ups off the turnovers and off good ball movement when they set up in their halfcourt offense on their way to 8-of-14 shooting in the period.
“I told them we had to create our offense off of our defense and that’s what we did,” Hood said. “We got a lot of those little quick shots that made a difference and turned around the game.”
EL scored just one point in the third. A free throw by Kelsey Nicolas halted a 10-0 Lewiston run to begin the quarter but preceded another 10-0 Devil run to end it which was closed out by a Varney steal and layup with 21 seconds left that made it 30-16.
The Eddies briefly cut the deficit to single digits on a Allie Forgues hoop early in the fourth, but Anthoine and Willey combined for 12 points on a 16-0 run to end the game.
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