Coming off their season opener win Wednesday evening against the North Valley Lady Knights, the Bruin girls varsity basketball team traveled to Medford Friday evening to take on the Cascade Christian Lady Challengers hoping to start an early season win streak.
The Lady Challengers coming off a convincing road win against Rogue River Wednesday night looked to slow the Bruin girl offense with early backcourt pressure. That, combined with the Bruin girls strong interior defense kept the score low early in the first period with the Bruin girls leading 0-2 midway through the first period. The Cascade Christian press was effective early, but the Bruin girls consistently broke the pressure as the took control of the first period and extended their lead to 5 points.
Starting the second period leading 9-14, the Bruin girls established a presence in the paint at both ends of the court, shutting down the Lady Challengers offense, while beating Cascade Christian to position under the basket for a few easy buckets and maintaining their 13-18 lead after 4:00 minutes in the second period. Cold shooting from the Lady Crusaders and excellent interior defense from the Bruin girls helped the Bruin girls extend their lead late to 7 points led by senior Zoe Carlson, #11, who hit two 3 pointers in the period.
Now leading 18-25 coming out of the halftime break, the Bruin girls turned up the offensive pressure running on the Lady Crusaders with every change of possession, and quickly getting into their half court offense. The Bruin girls quickly extended their lead to 14 after putting up 9 points in the first half of the third period. as the Bruin girls ended the third quarter leading by 9, 28-39.
As the final period progressed, the Bruin girls shooting cooled off and turnovers gave the Lady Knight opportunity to close the gap, but they just could not get the ball in the basket as the Bruin girls finished putting up 10 points in the period to take the 33-49 win.
The Bruin girls then traveled to Lakeview for a rare early afternoon contest against the 1-0 Lady Honkers coming off a decisive 62-6 road win over Rogue River Friday night.
Allowing only 6 points in their previous contest the day before, the Lady Honkers came into Saturdays contest with the Bruin girls who came into the contest scoring a combined 98 points in two games, touting a powerful defensive strategy.
That defense held the Bruin girls to just 28 total points in the game, with senior Ashlyn Schofield, #44, scoring half of all the Bruin girls points hitting three 3 pointers on her way to 14 points.
The Lady Honkers led in every quarter of play, defensively holding the Bruin girls to just 5 points in the third quarter and only 12 total points in the second half, while exploding for 26 points in the final quarter to put the game out of reach and hand the Bruin girls their first, 28-58 loss.
The Bruin girls will host 1-1 St. Mary’s Lady Crusaders, Wednesday, at 7:00pm.
