By Nic Eilerson / Scrimmageplaycva.com contributor
Heading into Tuesday night’s LIS semifinal, Collegiate coach Rives Fleming hoped his varsity girls’ basketball team could limit the league’s most dominant player, senior forward Sarah Imovbioh, to under 30 points. At the end of the day, Fleming got his wish, as his team held Imovbioh to a mere 21 points. But Saint Anne’s-Belfield coach Phil Stinnie’s squad proved they are much more than a one woman show in a 62-30 rout of the visiting Cougars.
Pressure from Collegiate forwards Emily Wright and Ann Wallace Tazewell out of the 2-3 zone proved relatively effective against Imovbioh, who committed several turnovers in the face of the Cougars’ frantic defending. An under-the-weather Imovbioh still came away with 21 points, 21 rebounds and seven steals. STAB’s biggest boost came from its role players though, some of whom needed to fill in for three players fighting illness. Players like Julia Haney — an eighth grader called up from JV — helped fill the void left by a sick Haley Kent, the team’s freshman point guard that normally sparks the offense. Haney started the second half and finished with seven points, four rebounds and four assists.
But perhaps the game’s most stellar performance came from junior guard Lexi Peck, who torched the Collegiate zone with dribble penetration all night long. Peck scored 16 of her 20 points in the second half, helping STAB outscore its opponent 22-5 in the third quarter. After responding to a dominant 14-2 first quarter performance with a lackadaisical second quarter effort, Peck and company came out of the gates with a furious full court press that mowed over a frustrated Collegiate backcourt.
“We weren’t ready for what they brought at the start of that third quarter,” Fleming said. “I felt like at halftime we were in a pretty decent position. I feel like if we had made some of those shots it could have been a close game, but we just couldn’t make them. So we were optimistic coming out of halftime but they knocked the wind out of our sails pretty quick.”
After a tight second quarter where the Cougars carried some momentum into the break, it seemed to be anybody’s ball game. But the undermanned Saints sensed that a league championship berth was on the line and appeared reinvigorated in the second half. The renewed life even took Stinnie by surprise.
“Just to have them with any type of energy, it’s more than we expected,” Stinnie said. “But we told them to buckle down and focus on what we have to do as a team to be successful. And they came out and they did it.”
STAB notched its third win against Collegiate this season, bringing their combined margin of victory over the Cougars to 90 points. They will host either No. 3 St. Gertrude’s or No. 2 St. Catherine’s on Thursday at 5 p.m. for the LIS title.
“It doesn’t really matter [who we play],” Peck said. “Either team we play is going to be a good team, so we’re definitely going to come out and be prepared.”
