Basketball: Lady Cats Down Venango Catholic In Home Opener (12/11/15)

The Lady Cats had a great effort, Tuesday night (December 9th), in delivering Tracy Durish, her first home win as Clarion Area’s head coach, with a 48-34 win over Venango Catholic. with a great offensive effort by Anna Reed, Kelly Beveridge and Sophie Wolf, qnd great all around defense.

Anna Reed looking to shoot.

Reed led the Cats with twenty-two points. Reed’s scoring was balanced, as she had multiple buckets in each quarter, including a pair of 3-pointers, in the second. Kelly Beveridge also hit double figures, with eleven. Sophie Wolf had 9 points, including a buzzer beating trey, to end the third stanza. Maya Thornton and Weaver each scored two and Wendy Beveridge sunk a free throw.

Ava Homan had 22 point for the Lady Vikings.

The Lady Cats Led 12-5 after one, 26-12 at the half. The score was 40-20 at the three quarter mark.

CAT QUOTES:

Coach Durish:

We were without Gloria Kroh, who is our center, our biggest player in terms of rebounding… So we had a discuss a game plan without her of course. The plan of course on defense, play a man, and contain Homan. Our best defender in that situation is Maddie Weaver. Maddie was to front her and keep her from getting the ball. She only scored two points and that’s where her energy was, in defense. That’s what we asked her to do. She executed it well. And Jenna Beichner, though she didn’t have points, her job was to help on the backside against Homan. You may not see the points for those two, but their focus was defensive.

Offensively we asked Kelly Beveridge and Anna Reed to take turns taking care of the ball and to find shot opportunities. They both did that today, with Anna getting 22 and Kelly getting ten. But Anna really picked it up on defense, getting five steals and Kelly, with three steals.  They both turned them into layups on the other end.

Maya Thornton, coming off the bench, was playing defense on Homan, when Maddie needed a break. But she managed to pull down six rebounds and score a basket for us.

Everything this year has been based on team effort, that it takes all of us to win a game. And for the first conference win, it really did. It took all of us to win and I think we’ve all realized that. I’m really excited about the team effort.