Hersey puts away Bartlett

After 7 road games to start the season, the Bartlett girls basketball team took to its home court for the first time Tuesday.

The Hawks' reward for all that traveling? Undefeated Hersey, itself playing its seventh straight road game.

The good news for the Hawks is they got 10 points off the bench from senior forward Mariah Martinez, including 8 in the fourth quarter. The bad news is she got that playing time because senior point guard and leading scorer Shelley Lyjak fouled out midway through the third quarter.

Add 33 percent shooting from the field (19-for-57), and that culminated in a 60-44 loss to the Huskies, who improved to 9-0.

"Benet, Geneva, Hersey and Oswego East, I think between them there are three losses," Bartlett coach Dave Mello said of his team's 4 defeats. "But at some point, we have to put a stop to that and be able to beat them. Just learning from them is nice now, but as the season goes on, and we get into the Christmas tournament and as the postseason approaches, our season is over if we can't beat those teams."

Hersey was as good as advertised, using a 7-2 run at the end of the second quarter to jump out to a 23-14 halftime lead.

The Huskies added a 9-2 run early in the third, and suddenly the score was 32-19. That coincided with Lyjak fouling out with 4:41 left in the period. The scoring onus thus fell on the shoulders of Martinez and senior forward Kaitlin Brohan, who responded with a pair of buckets with less than 2 minutes to go to cut the deficit to 37-27.

But Hersey negated that with a layup off a miss by senior center Maggie Berigan with 1:15 to go, and a 3 from the left corner by junior Kelly Weyrich with 3 seconds left that gave the Huskies a 42-27 halftime lead. Hersey also added a 6-3 run to start the fourth that put the contest away, though Bartlett ended the game with an 8-2 run of its own, including a pair of baskets by Martinez.

Bartlett could also feel good about a defensive effort that played a big role in 18 Hersey turnovers, including 9 in first half, which Huskies' coach Mary Fendley termed "uncharacteristic."

"We usually have a max of 10 turnovers a game, so that's a lot," she said. "In our first half, on top of turning over the ball, we couldn't find a way to score, and at least in the second half we were a little more consistent with our shots. We limited our turnovers a little bit in the second half."

Junior Claire Gritt led all scorers with 21 points, while Berigan added 15 and grabbed 6 rebounds.