Sleepy Hollow Wins with Balanced Offense

It's hard to beat a team when you can't just focus on one player and instead have to gameplan to beat numerous players. That's the advantage Sleepy Hollow had in its contest against visiting Croton-Harmon at Jack McCleery Gymnasium.

Sleepy Hollow (9-6) had four of its players score six or more points in a hard-fought defensive battle against the Tigers (5-10). That balance helped the Lady Horsemen to a 45-31 victory against the visitors yesterday.

Leading that balanced attack was senior guard Brionna Gamble with 15 points. She was followed by senior forward Tauress Campbell (13 points), sophomore guard Jamie Bucci (eight) and junior forward Kerry Olivera (six).

"We already clinched a spot in the playoffs so now it's just about being consistent, win more games so that we get a high seed," Gamble said.

 Grace Carr also contributed to the win with a field goal and Barbara Good tallied a free throw.

Seeing so many players in the scoring column put a smile on the face of Sleepy Hollow coach Nick Romeo after the game.

"If you can, not have to rely on one girl specifically to score, that's such a huge advantage," Romeo said. "And Brionna is our leading scorer for the year but we didn't have to rely on her only to score. Tauress did a great job, Kerry stepped up and hit big shots, Jamie hit a couple of big threes. The balance like that is great for us. It helps the rotation. It doesn't burden one specific girl all the time."

Early in the game, Sleepy Hollow had the burden of trying to score against a tough defense, trailing 6-4 in the first part of the opening quarter.

Sleepy Hollow though eventually got things going, scoring the last eight points of the first quarter. The 8-0 run was capped off by a basket from Carr.

"They were playing a 1-2-2 or 3-2 zone against us," Romeo said. "We were leaving the top part open and we weren't filling the hole with a player. We had five spread out. We wanted to make sure they knew that we had one girl inside. Tauress Campbell did a great job popping in. It gave us an option to work with. It made their defense move into different positions so it created shot opportunities for us."

Croton-Harmon then created opportunities for itself and pulled within three of the Sleepy Hollow lead at 23-20. However, the Lady Horsemen called timeout after that with 5:05 to go in the third quarter and were more composed after that timeout.

Off the break, Bucci hit a trey and the Lady Horsemen started to roll. That included Gamble coming through when she was needed the most, scoring nine points in the final quarter.

"It was time to come through for my team," Gamble said. "You have to value the ball in a game like this because each possession counted."