Size and experience can make a big difference and it certainly showed when visited on Tuesday in a non-league girls basketball contest.
The veteran Tolog team, led by 6-foot junior center Lana Haddad and senior guard Vanessa Romero, jumped out to an early lead and never looked back in a 59-20 victory.
“They are a very bad matchup for us. They’ve got a really strong, big post player,” Flintridge Prep coach Todd Frost said of the Tologs and Haddad. “Once she got the ball she could do whatever she wanted and we didn’t have an answer for that. We tried in the second half to keep her from getting the ball, and she still gets the ball at times. It is a challenge for us when we face good, big strong post people because that’s not our strength.”
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Haddad finished with 23 points and 12 rebounds. Romero added 19 for the Tologs (12-7 overall).
Flintridge Prep (4-12), which returns just two varsity players from a year ago, was led by Kristin Shum, who had seven points.
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“We’ve seen games where we’ve played this level of competition and she’s been a little impatient, but I think she had a lot of patience today,” FSHA coach Gino Pacella said of Haddad. “When she has a double-double, and she’s in the 20s scoring we’re a pretty hard team to beat. It opens everything up for everyone else and makes the game a little easier for us.”
The host Rebels started out right with the Tologs as the sides were tied at four earl in the game. But a 3-pointer by Romero at the 6:33 mark of the first quarter gave Flintridge Sacred Heart the lead. The Tologs went on a 14-0 run to end the first quarter.
Flintridge Prep opened the second quarter with a 3-pointer from Katherine Bogaard. But Haddad continued to dominate, scoring 10 in the quarter to give her 16 at halftime.
After leading 34-13 at halftime, the Tologs continued with another run, this time a 12-0 run that ended with 38 second left in the third quarter on a basket by Shum.
“I thought they did well,” Pacella said of his team. “At times I thought we were slow pushing the tempo, but overall you can’t fault them for a 39-point win. They did a good job. They were patient. The turnovers were pretty low and we crashed the boards.”
Frost said he was impressed with how well the Tologs did against his team.
“He’s done a great job of building that program,” Frost said of Pacella. “We graduated eight seniors, so we’re trying to get back to where we were before.”