Lady Horsemen Fight Back to Beat Saunders

The Sleepy Hollow girls basketball team beat the Saunders High School Blue Devils yesterday, 47-43.

The win came after a rocky first half for the Lady Horsemen, with the Blue Devils outscoring and out rebounding while most of Sleepy Hollow's shots ricocheted off the backboard.

"The thing about our team is sometimes we start off rough, but we can always come back," Kelly Bender said.

The Blue Devils headed into Monday's game with a 3-7 record for the year. Devils' head coach, John Volpe, thought his team had a chance to win if they could use their speed to counteract Hollow's taller athletes. 

"We saw Sleepy play a couple weeks ago," Volpe said. "They are good and they they are bigger than we are. It's going to come down to rebounds, free throws and loose balls."

Sleepy Hollow coach Nick Romeo said one of the keys going into the game would be to contain the Blue Devils' All-Section athlete Jessica Negron.

"We have to slow her down and run all five girls together," he said.

The Lady Horsemen got off to a promising start, taking a 5-0 lead going into the fifth minute.

However, after a Saunders timeout, the Blue Devils dialed up their game, quickly showing they could out-maneuver and out-score Sleepy Hollow.

They picked apart the Lady Horsemen defense by shooting from the edges of the key, while all of Sleepy Hollow's shots seemed to miss the net.

"We did everything right in the first half, it's just that the shots weren't falling," Romeo said. "Our shooting percentage was pretty low."

The Lady Horsemen lost the first and second quarter battles; Saunders outscored them by two points each period.

The game went into the half with Sleepy Hollow down 19-23, at the opposite end of the Blue Devils' momentum.

At the break, Brionna Gamble led Sleepy Hollow in scoring with 5 points, followed by Kerry Oliveira with 4 points.

Negron had 12 points for the Blue Devils in the first 16 minutes of play, and was seen by Romeo as the key to turning the tide in the second half.

"I told the girls at the half to continue what we were doing, plus take Jessica (Negron) out of the game," he said.

The second half started with quick points by both teams, but the pep that the Blue Devils had in the first half quickly diminished as Hollow stole, rebounded and went on an unanswered 6-point streak, putting them up 27-25 going into the third minute. The Lady Horsemen would keep a narrow lead for the rest of the game.

Hollow also succeeded in taking Negron out in the second half. Stellar defense, with the help of man-on-man coverage by Hollow's Grace Carr, kept Negron's second half scoring to 2 points.

"When it comes to players like that you have to be aggressive and not foul and pretty much stay on your toes the whole time," Oliveira said.

For the Blue Devils, the loss really came in the third period.

"I was very proud of our effort, but then they got on that 6-0 run at the beginning of the third quarter," Volpe said. "We played bad the third quarter and Sleepy never stopped running up and down the court."

The game ended with Oliveira leading in overall scoring with 15 points followed by Kelly Bender, 8 points; Brionna Gamble, 8 points; Jamie Bucci, 8 points; and Tauress Campbell, 6 points.

The Lady Horsemen are now 6-3 on the season and 2-0 in their league. They secured a playoff spot last week and they are looking to build on their success as they head into the post season.

"We're looking to continually improve," Romeo said. "We're looking to build on our seed right now. We're hoping to get a nice home game in the first round of the playoffs and we'll see what happens from there."