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Clovers can't match intensity, fall to Lady Arrows
CLOVERDALE--It wasn't for lack of effort but Cloverdale girls' basketball team took a loss at home Thursday when Sullivan visited. Through lack of rebounding by the Clovers the Lady Arrows were able to establish and maintain a lead, en route to a 49-28 win.
"I think tonight at the start of the game our defense looked good," Clover coach Matt Langdon said. "We know that we are a smaller team, so rebounding is going to be an issue. But there comes a certain time when you can't use that as an excuse."
The Clovers struggled to get easy baskets in the first quarter but the defense was usually able to match the Lady Arrows. However into the second quarter the second chance points that Sullivan was able to manufacture during its extra possession led to a 28-16 Clover deficit at halftime.
"I thought early on that was the deciding factor," Langdon said "We played good defense. If we would've held them to one shot, it would have been single digits for sure. There second and third shots on possessions just started to add up."
Langdon said it is a combination of things both in practice and in games that can improve rebounding performance.
"I think with rebounding there is a technique that you can work on in practice but it is also a mentality of I'm going to get that ball." Landon said. "I'm going to beat the person to the ball. We can obviously work on the technique of getting a body on somebody. We're doing too much turning around and jumping at the ball instead of putting the ball on somebody."
Despite the defensive pressure of seniors Bailee Stevens and Laura Worthington as well as some aggressive offensive drives into the paint, the second half was marred for the Clover fans by a 13-6 Sullivan run in the third quarter that led to a bigger fourth-quarter hole for the Clovers to climb out of.
"I felt like in the second half we didn't come out with as much energy on defense," Langdon said. "We could've done more with that. We just didn't have that burst tonight. We just need ot learn from it. It's not the end of the world. It's just some things that we need to work on and things I need to come up with in practice to help us improve on certain things."
Following the loss, Cloverdale (1-1) will travel to Owen Valley (0-1) whose only game played was a 72-26 blowout loss to Greencastle.
"We're an older group," Langdon said. "We talked about how we have to learn from this. We have another winnable game. We cannot focus on this loss. We have to turn it right around. I think the next two days of practice will determine what kind of team we see Monday. You have to be a new team, not at the next game but at practice tomorrow."
At Cloverdale
Sullivan 16 12 13 8 -- 49
Cloverdale 5 11 5 7 -- 28
Individual Stats
Stevens 10 pts, 1 reb; Pieper 6 pts, 2 reb; Worthington 3 reb, 1 asst; Hamm 6 pts, 1 reb; Dorsett 3 pts, 3 reb; Smith 2 pts; Huge 1 reb