The senior leadership of the Bellmore-JFK girl’s basketball team was too much for the young Long Beach squad to overcome on Friday afternoon.
The Cougars, whose starting lineup consists of four seniors and a junior, began the game with an 8-0 run in the first two minutes and never looked back to earn their first Conference AA-III victory, defeating the Marines 58-24. Long Beach fell to 2-2 in conference play.
Long Beach head coach Lori DeVivio said she hopes her team will use this game as a learning tool for the future.
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“We’re a very young team with a starting lineup that consists of one freshman, two sophomores, one junior, and one senior,” DeVivio said. “When our players become seniors, we expect to be playing at the level that we saw from Kennedy today. We were clearly overmatched because of the experience factor.”
Even though the Marines only scored six points in the first quarter, five in the second, three in the third and 10 in the fourth, DeVivio liked what she saw offensively from her team.
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“We ran our offensive sets much better today even though we were not scoring because we have been struggling all season,” DeVivio said. “We felt better about the sets that we ran even though we could not convert them into buckets. We are starting to get better chemistry on the court in running the offense.”
Freshman forward Liz Rourke and sophomore forward Molly Martin led all scorers with five points each. This was just the second game when Martin was held to single digit scoring.
“We defended Martin, who is a really good player, really well tonight,” said Bellmore JFK head coach Debbie Cipolla. “The team did a great job defensively today holding them to 24 points.”
Cipolla said she was excited that her team won their first conference game after losing three consecutive games.
“We were able to execute the things we have been working on and it was the first time all season we played together as a team,” Cipolla said.
Senior guard Allie Keller, with 20 points, six rebounds and two assists, including three shots from three point range, and Morgan Kitton, with 12 points and 14 rebounds, led Bellmore-JFK to the victory.
“Allie is a great court leader,” Cipolla said. “She helped on defense by bringing us together and did a terrific job helping us get the victory today.”
The Marines will look to hand Mepham their first loss of the season on Tuesday afternoon, with tip off scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at Long Beach High School.
