From The Bench: East Haven Girls beat Hillhouse 63-50

In a span of 2 minutes in the third quarter the Lady Yellowjackets had a 9-0 run and took all of the momentum away from the Hillhouse Academics at home Friday night. The game started out with each team trading point for point and the first quarter ending 21-20 in the Yellowjackets favor. The second quarter the Academics began to take the momentum of the half and out scored East Haven 12 points to 6. When the half ended Hillhouse was up by 5 and East Haven coach Anthony Russell clearly was not happy with his team’s effort in the first half.

When the Easties came out of their locker room to start the second half they had look of determination and a fire in their eyes that was not there at the end of the second quarter. This was clearly a different team from the start of the game. It was then the Easties imposed their will on their opponent. They pressed hard and the Academics crumbled under that pressure. East Haven lived the third quarter in the Hillhouse end of the court and took control of the game mentally, then physically and then the lead and never looked back. I asked Kylie Schlottman who had 13 points alone in the third quarter about Coach Russell’s motivational speech at halftime and she said “Yea I mean obviously he was pretty angry at us because we weren't playing to well and challenged us to step it up in the second half”. Step it up they did. Schlottman would finish the game with 23 points and Olivia Coyle would be close behind with 18. Freshman Alexis Penziwater would end the game with 10 points including two 3 pointers from “Downtown”.

In the end the Easties put Hillhouse away 63-50 and improved their record to 10-1. The Easties will face Wilbur Cross on Jan. 17 at Cross.

Way to go Ladies!!

Mark Curcio

From The Bench