By KLAS STOLPE
Sentinel Staff Writer
It is hard to beat an opponent when you have 30 turnovers, even if that opponent happened to be a lower division foe having a bad night.
Unfortunately for the Mt. Edgecumbe High School girls basketball team, they had more than 30 turnovers against the top 3A opponent in the state having another outstanding evening on a neutral court.
The Lady Braves were run over 98-46 by the Anchorage Christian School Lions on Thursday at the Barrow Whaler Invitational Tournament.
“We had over 30 turnovers,” Mt. Edgecumbe coach Kathy Forrester said. “And they scored on all of them.”
Mt. Edgecumbe ran into a full court defense by ACS that propelled the undefeated Lions out to a 35-11 first quarter lead and put the Lady Braves on their heels.
“We knew that they would press,” Forrester said. “And we worked on it, but we insisted on dribbling too much and then passing to their defense.”
Senior’s Sanora Bell (Yakutat), Brystel Charlie (Kwethluk), and Maggie Miller (Nome) provided the only offense in the first eight minutes and sophomore Autumn Beans (St. Marys), senior Faith Kameroff (Emmonak), and Charlie found hoops in the second stanza but ACS, behind Mary Kate Parks’ 13 points, pushed ahead 64-19 at the half.
“We played intimidated,” Forrester said. “I know we are better than the way we played today.”
In the third quarter Mt. Edgecumbe began to shoot the ball with senior Catherine Sunny (Nightmute), Beans and Miller hitting from beyond the arch and Charlie, Bell and senior Tyra Brown (Chevak) keeping pace inside. The Lady Braves tallied 18 points, but ACS also kept pace to lead 82-37 with just eight minutes to play and outscored Mt. Edgecumbe 16-9 in the fourth quarter.
“In the third quarter we came out and played well,” Forrester said. “But they matched us in points. We can’t win a game playing only one quarter. I’m hoping to show a better game tomorrow. We need to put this past us…way past us.”
Bell led Mt. Edgecumbe with 11 points, Charlie added 10, Beans 7, Miller 5, Brown 4, Sunny 3, sr. Leticia Skaflestad (Hoonah), sr. Lizzy Allen (Dillingham), and Kameroff 2 each.
The Lady Braves were 9-19 at the charity stripe, the Lions hit 5-12.
ACS’ Parker scored a game-high 31 points, Mykaila Pickard added 18, Destiny Reimers 17, Jordan Todd 11, Taylor Tiulana 9, Jessie Davis 5, Kelsey Smallwood 4, and Shemah Yisreal 3.
Mt. Edgecumbe girls play Barrow today and Valdez on Saturday to finish tournament play.
