Third quarter woes hamper Clovers against Cadets

Friday, January 14, 2022

CLOVERDALE – The Class 2A No. 11 Cascade Cadets came down to Cloverdale on Friday night and showed why they are a ranked team in the state. The Cadets shook off a slow start and despite a gritty defensive effort by the Clovers, Cascade left with a 61-35 victory. The Cadets harassed the Clovers into 35 turnovers and an 8-of-30 shooting night to improve their record to 14-3, while the Clovers, playing a tough end of season schedule, fell to 8-11 on the year. The very physical contest resulted in 51 total free throws shot, but despite Cloverdale taking 31 of them, they only converted 18 of the free tosses. Combine the poor shooting with the turnovers and the Clovers could not muster enough offense to stay with the Cadets. “You can’t shoot the ball like that from the free throw line. We left too many points out there, especially against a good team like this,” Cloverdale head coach James Wade said. The game got off to a sloppy start. The two teams combined to turn the ball over the first seven possessions before Veronica Carter knocked down a free throw. A few minutes later she added a layup and a rebound bucket to give the Clovers a 5-3 lead, but Cascade would score the final 12 points of the quarter to take a 15-5 advantage and Cloverdale would not lead again in the game. Cloverdale had 11 first-quarter turnovers that prevented it from being able to get opportunities to score. “We started out really rough and turned the ball over a lot. That hurt us because I think we were running our offense pretty well,” Wade said. Carter and Ella Rightmyer led a small rally in the second period. As they were doing damage inside. A Chloe Sprinkle layup cut the deficit to seven points at 21-14, but Cascade would still close the half with a 26-17 lead. “We competed really well. We did some good things, we were in the game down just nine at halftime,” Wade said. Cascade put the game away in the third period. The Cadets scored the first 12 points of the quarter as their shots began to fall and they led 38-17 before a Kiersten Wade trey stopped the run. Unfortunately for the Clovers they were down 38-20 at that point and a buzzer-beating jumper by Abby Parsons of Cascade boosted the Cadet lead to 45-21 heading into the final period. “We had a really bad third quarter. The game really got away from us,” Wade said as the Clovers had 10 turnovers in the quarter and put just four points on the board. Cascade kept extending its lead throughout the final quarter The Cadets, despite the Clovers getting to the foul line several times in the period, added to the lead and closed the game with the 61-35 victory. The Cadets were able to get 14 points from Parsons, 13 each from Sydney Warran and Christina Lamb. Cloverdale’s Carter led her squad with 13 points.

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