Lady Trojans Advance to Semi-Finals Over BCC, 79-43

The Gaithersburg girls basketball team easily advanced to the 4A West semi-finals Tuesday night with a 79-43 trouncing of Bethesda-Chevy Chase.

Despite a week off due to a first-round bye, Gaithersburg played as well as they have all season. Sisters Colleen and Kara Marshall led the Trojans in scoring with 18 and 15 points respectively, and blasted the Barons from the outside with three 3-pointers each.

Sarah Seipp, with 13 points, and Jackie Jackson, with 10 points, were also at their best Tuesday night. Seipp aggressively, and sometimes even stylishly, attacked the basket, and Jackson was tenacious on the boards.

BCC struggled to score, despite having obvious offensive talent in players such as senior guard A.J. Johnson, who led her team in scoring with 16 points. The Barons often missed open shots and easy layups, only for Gaithersburg to beat them on the rebound. They also gave up a lot of turnovers off of sloppy passing that Gaithersburg was all too eager to capitalize on.

This all came to a head in the third quarter, when Gaithersburg stepped up its defensive intensity and held BCC to just six points. The Trojans blew the lead wide open, making it a 25-point game by the end of the quarter and effectively ending the game.

"In the second half, I truly was" satisfied with the defense, Gaithersburg head coach Adrian McDaniel said. "We were working on playing good man-to-man defense," something he said the team was not doing well in the beginning of the season and did well in the second half of the game.

McDaniel noted that the Trojans ran down the shot clock four times in the second half. "Any time you do that, you're playing good defense," he said.

BCC head coach Rob Kurtz attributed Gaithersburg's success to their "high tempo" play.

"I think it comes down to when you don't get stops, teams get momentum," Kurtz said, adding that it came down to their defense. One of the team's goals for the game was to limit Gaithersburg to less than 50 points, he said.

But despite being down 25 points at the end of the third quarter, BCC did not simply lie down and give up. Their ability to match Gaithersburg's pressure and intensity was one of the few things that Kurtz said the team did well.

"We lost to a better team," Kurtz said. "It would have sucked if we lost to Richard Montgomery, who I think we're better than." BCC beat Richard Montgomery 58-43 in the first round on Saturday.

BCC often mirrored Gaithersburg's full-court pressure defense throughout the game and was just as physical. This did not go unnoticed amongst the Trojans.

"We're fueling on everyone hating on us right now," Kara Marshall said. "And it's making us great. Our momentum right now is awesome."

"I don't think anything we could've done tonight would have worked," Kurtz said. "I think [Gaithersburg] played a great game tonight ... they made shots and killed us on the offensive glass, and you know, that's the way the game goes."