PHILIPSBURG — The action was end-to-end, with plenty of fast-break points.
“I was really tired,” Philipsburg-Osceola junior Briana Rusnak said. “I was exhausted at one point. It was just — whoo! — it was a lot of running.”
In the end, Bald Eagle Area’s tough defense and depth was too much for Rusnak and her Lady Mounties teammates as the Lady Eagles earned a 61-46 victory Monday night.
Marissa Ward led the offensive charge with 18 points while Abby Gettig tossed in 11 points and Kaitlyn Miller netted nine.
The Lady Eagles (13-3) also forced 30 P-O turnovers using a variety of full- and half-court defenses.
“We had a couple different defenses we wanted to work on tonight,” BEA basketball coach Troy Butterworth said. “We wanted to work on our (man-to-man) a little bit and we did that tonight. We had some other defenses with some different looks. ... We’re trying to mix things up so teams aren’t getting used to what we run all the time.”
When Butterworth’s team really turned up the intensity, the Lady Mounties struggled to find an answer.
“Their hands are so fast,” P-O coach Doug Myers said. “Our kids are dribbling the ball and they’re swatting at it so fast. We got a lot of shots blocked because we didn’t get the shot up in time. They get to the spot quick. They’re athletic and they move well.”
The Lady Mounties (4-13) were paced by a trio in double figures, with 15 points for Abby Showers, 12 points and 15 rebounds for Rusnak and 10 points and six rebounds for Lauren Simcox.
Despite the loss and all those turnovers, P-O can claim moral victories with several rallies, never letting the Lady Eagles pull too far away.
BEA had a 17-point lead midway through the second quarter, but the Lady Mounties cut it to nine by halftime. The lead shot up again to 18 points by the end of the third quarter, but P-O sliced it to eight with 3:30 left.
“That’s what I want this program to be about, from elementary clear through to the high school,” Myers said. “We never quit until the clock hits that last zero. We’re going to fight to the end, battle to the end and we’re going to hustle to the end. It’s about hustle to us.”
“We wanted to keep going,” Rusnak said. “We didn’t want to give up. A lot of our points — we wanted to keep shooting and scoring. We wanted to get back at them. We didn’t want to give up any points or anything.”
After the teams traded buckets for the next two minutes, BEA finally put the win away by scoring the final seven points with layups for Ward and Miller, two free throws from Ward and one from Mary Pillot after pestering P-O into turnovers and hurried shots.
“We cut it to eight in the fourth quarter,” said Myers, whose team forced 19 BEA turnovers. “We just made the crucial mistakes at the crucial times.”
The Lady Eagles used their bench extensively, with the starters playing a little over half the game.
Still, Butterworth is eager to see his team, with just a couple weeks remaining in the regular season, put all the pieces together at both ends.
“We haven’t gotten there yet,” said Butterworth, whose team is scoring 54 points a game and only been held under 50 twice all season. “I told them in practice that we haven’t played a whole game where we’ve clicked. When we do click it’s going to be something special. We can score 50, 60 points, when we click one of these games and our defense picks up the intensity and gets the offense going a little more there are times we can push into the 80-point range.”
That kind of pace would probably be pretty exhausting to the Lady Mounties. Even the pace Monday was pretty tough.
“I’m going to be really sore (today),” Rusnak said. “My knees are killing me right now.”
Gordon Brunskill can be reached at 231-4608.
