High school girls basketball: Brush gets defensive in WRC win over Chardon
By John Kampf, The News-Herald
POSTED: 01/19/17, 12:18 AM EST | UPDATED: 1 DAY AGO
Practices aren’t generally constructed for a player’s enjoyment.
It’s a good thing because the recent practices at Brush haven’t been a lot of fun.
Unhappy with his team’s defensive intensity of late, Arcs coach Demarris Winters said practices this week were 90 percent about defense.
The point he was hoping to make was apparently made. Winters’ team held visiting Chardon without a field goal for more than nine minutes on Jan. 18, paving the way for a 50-39 win that kept Brush atop the Western Reserve Conference while also delivering a likely death blow to the Hilltoppers’ WRC hopes.
Brush forced Chardon into 19 turnovers and 33 percent shooting (13 of 39), including a stretch from the 1:52 mark of the second quarter to the 41-second of the third quarter where the Hilltoppers were held without a field goal.
Brush improved to 15-1 (10-0 in the WRC), while Chardon fell to 10-4 (7-3).
“I feel good again,” Winters said. “I think that’s our best game we’ve played this season, offensively, defensively, trapping, boxing out. ... I think we did a lot of things right tonight.”
Chardon coach Cullen Harris couldn’t disagree.
“They beat us tonight,” Harris said. “We didn’t beat ourselves. They beat us.”
Whether it was Brush’s full-court pressure or ability to close out on Chardon’s shooters, the Hilltoppers got very few good looks. When Sydney Feller made two free throws at the 1:56 mark of the third quarter, Chardon had as many field goals made as free throws made (seven) for the game.
Brush senior Arielle DeBase, making her return from a broken left thumb, credited defense for the win.
“We know how you play in practice is how you play on the court (in games),” she said. “We are ready for any challenge ahead of us.”
With their defense in full gear, Brush got to work on offense.
Leading, 29-19, at the half, the Arcs went on a 10-4 run to start the third, capped by a jumper and a coast-to-coast layup off a steal by DeBase.
The only Chardon points during that run came on free throws.
>> Arielle DeBase video interview
>> Chardon coach Cullen Harris interview
Jenna Perry nailed a pair of 3-pointers in the fourth quarter — each of which opened 15-point margins (42-27 and 47-32). She had five triples in the game.
Only once in the second half did Chardon get the margin to single digits, and that was with 21 seconds left in the game.
“They’re big, they’re long, they’re athletic and they switched everything and took us out of what we wanted to do,” Harris said. “They mucked things up and made it difficult for us to get good looks. When we did get good looks, we didn’t make them.”
Feller had a team-high 13 points, while Tessa Ludwick had nine.
Chardon was limited to a 4-for-17 performance from beyond the arc.
DeBase and Perry each had 15 points, with DeBase adding five assists and three steals and Perry having four rebounds and four steals.
“I was really nervous,” DeBase said of her first game back with her left thumb heavily taped. “I didn’t know how my hand would affect my game. When I finally got into a rhythm, it was like a regular game.”
Harris said it’s doubtful his team can sneak back into the conference race, and that it looks like a two-horse race now with Brush and 12-1 (7-1) North.
“Our goal every day is to go 1-0 when we step on the court,” Harris said. “We didn’t meet that goal today.”
The beat goes on for Brush, the sixth-ranked Division I team in the recent Associated Press poll.
“I had never heard that before,” DeBase said of the words “state ranked” ahead of Brush’s name. “I come to school and they’re like, ‘You’re that good?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah.’”