Burlington Central snaps 5-game skid

The Burlington Central girls basketball team used effective 3-point shooting to snap its 5 game losing streak Thursday night at home.

Central sank 9 baskets to Richmond-Burton's 10, but 6 of the buckets were from beyond the arc in the 35-25 win over the Kishwaukee River Conference rival. R-B shooters drained only one trey.

"We'll take it. We scored enough to win," said Central coach Mark Smith. "It wasn't pretty all the time but we got the job done."

Freshman Kathryn Schmidt led the way for Central. All 4 of her basket were 3-pointers. Schmidt, who led all scorers with 17 points, also nailed 3 critical free throws in the fourth quarter to thwart a R-B rally.

Smith felt his team's successful efforts in neutralizing KC Davids and Brooke Legnaioli, R-B's two main scoring threats also contributed to the win.

"We tried to limit 10 (Davids) from going to the basket. I thought we did a pretty good job with that," Smith said. "We tried to limit 22 (Legnaioli) from shooting 3s. We did a good job with that too."

Davids scored a team-high 10 points. Legnaioli hit R-B's only 3-pointer.

Central (8-7, 5-2) never trailed in the contest. Mackenzie West started the scoring with a layup 40 seconds into the contest. Central led 12-6 at the end of the first quarter.

Central maintained its 6 point margin at the half, leading 18-12.

R-B (7-8, 2-4) pulled within 3, 22-19, with 41 seconds left in the third quarter. Davids was fouled attempting a 3-point shot. The 5-foot-1 senior connected on all three free throws. Reserve Lilliane Morretti (6 points) sank her second trey of the night from the right corner just before time expired returning Central's lead to 6, 25-19, to start the last quarter.

With 3:30 left in the contest, Davids hit a jumper from the top of the key and cut Central's led again to 3, 28-25.

A minute later Schmidt was fouled. She made both ends of a one-and-one to widen the gap to 5, 30-25. She returned to the charity stripe with a little over a minute left to play and split two free throws to give her squad a 31-25 margin.

"I'm really proud of the way that they got it close there in the end and we held our ground and got the win," said Smith.