Lake Park gets it right from the start
When Lake Park is doing everything right, the Lancers play something like they did Friday afternoon.
Lake Park dominated play from the start of its nonconference girls basketball game, defeating Addison Trail 62-32 in Roselle. It was a lesson for the Lancers, who are just learning what they’re capable of.
“We had a lot of people play really, really good minutes today,” Lancers coach Brian Rupp said. “Our point guard, Erica Fant, was just a pest on defense and she ran our stuff offensively well because of what she did on the defensive end. Jen Warfield played a really good game. She was pretty aggressive. All around, people like Kelly Adams, who’s a bench player for us, she played outstanding. We couldn’t get her off the floor. So it was nice to see other people step up today.”
“We’re excited to hopefully keep doing the same thing throughout the season,” Lancers junior Alexis Pall added.
Missing junior guard Emily Duckhorn because of what Rupp called “a leg issue,” the Lancers (5-10) jumped out to a 21-8 lead after one quarter of play, with Pall scoring 7 points and grabbing 6 rebounds, 5 at the offensive end. Pall finished with 11 points and 9 rebounds in limited playing time as 15 Lancers saw court time.
“We’ve been working really hard and practicing a lot, and I’m just really proud of how we played,” Pall said.
“We played well without Duckhorn ... so to come out here and win by 30 is great,” Rupp added.
Warfield scored a game-best 14 points to go with 6 rebounds, 4 steals and 3 blocked shots. Fant finished with 10 points.
“It was good to see us play four quarters of basketball,” Rupp said. “It was great.”
Connie Barkoulies was a bright spot for Addison Trail in the first half, hitting three 3-pointers to finish with 11 points.
“She played well,” Addison Trail coach Rob Schader said. “She’s played well all year long for us. She played hard defensively and offensively and made some shots for us.”
The Blazers hit six 3s for the game.
“We really focused on that,” Schader added. “After watching that it’s hard to say we focused on anything, but we did focus on shooting some more 3s this week in practice, so that’s the one thing we got out of that today. We’ve got to attack the basket again offensively. And we played no defense. They fire up a lot of 3s, and we talked about that and worked on that. We just didn’t close out very well and when they missed shots they’d get their rebounds. That’s just the will to win, playing hard.”
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