St. Edward rolls over Rosary
St. Edward girls basketball coach Michelle Dawson has installed a new offense this season and it was clicking on all cylinders Thursday night in Elgin.
The Green Wave raced out to a 24-9 lead after one quarter and never looked back, rolling over Rosary 70-40 in the Suburban Christian Gold opener for both teams.
“We’ve implemented a whole new offensive system this year and we’ve steadily improved at becoming more consistent with it,” Dawson said. “We’re pleased with our progress so far.”
The Green Wave players like the new up-tempo offense as well.
“We’re always moving, no standing around,” said junior guard Callie Johnson, who had 12 points and 8 rebounds. “It’s definitely a quicker offense. It’s pass and cut, pass and cut. Always looking, always moving around.”
Rosary coach Dave Beebe noticed the new offense, too.
“And they’ve got the players to run it with,” he said.
St. Edward (5-1, 1-0) didn’t turn the ball over in the first quarter and its defense made Rosary (2-5, 0-1) cough it up eight times. The Wave scored off six of those turnovers.
“Our press really got us going,” Dawson said. “The effort was there and the intensity was there tonight. We cut down a lot on our turnovers. The last couple of games we let teams make runs on us and tonight we wanted to sustain any runs.”
The best run Rosary had all night came late in the second quarter. Down 38-13, the Royals scored 7 straight points to make it a 38-20 game, but Paige Gannon (8 points, 5 rebounds) scored the final basket of the first half for the Green Wave as they took a 40-20 advantage into the break.
The closest Rosary would come in the second half was 18. St. Edward’s biggest lead was 32.
“We have to take care of the basketball and we have to guard people,” said Beebe. “They’re a good solid basketball team. We knew who their shooters were, we just defend them. They did the right things. We didn’t play real well but don’t discredit them. They played very well. We couldn’t match their intensity. They played hard.
“We’ll see them again later on and hopefully we’ll have our act together.”
If there were a flaw in St. Edward’s game Thursday it was first-half rebounding. Time and again Rosary beat St. Edward to the glass, outrebounding the Wave 21-9 in the first 16 minutes. But St. Edward came back stronger in the second half and finished losing the board battle only 35-34. The Wave also came close to its goal of 12 turnovers, committing only 15, while Rosary turned it over 27 times on the night.
“Our turnover mark to not run in practice was 12 and we only had 15 so that’s pretty good,” Johnson said. Rebounding ... we’ll have to get our butts moving in practice.”
Junior Alexandria Lee led the Green Wave with 15 points while Maddie Kerr added 9. Enza Ranallo added 8 points and 5-foot-11 forward Katherine Von Ahnen had 7, thanks to a rare 3-pointer.
Senior Breann Maryanski had a monster game for Rosary, scoring a game-high 23 points and pulling down 12 rebounds. Sophomore Mary Wentworth scored 7 points for the Royals but no other Rosary player had more than 3 points.