Crusaders’ press takes down Darrington

SHORELINE

Shoreline Christian’s trademark full-court press helped it to an early 10-0 lead over Darrington and the Crusaders never trailed en route to a 48-31 win in girls basketball action Dec. 18.

“I thought we started with great energy,” Shoreline Christian coach Stan De Yager said.

Shoreline Christian built a 25-12 lead by the half and led by 20, 37-17, in the third quarter after a basket by Ashley Ott.

Darrington went on a 11-2 run and cut the lead to 39-28 with five minutes to play. But the Crusaders responded with seven unanswered points, five of them coming from Angela Woods, to put the Loggers away.

Woods scored a game-high 23 points including 16 in the second half.

“The second half wasn’t our best but we still saw some improvements to go with that,” Woods said. “Tonight wasn’t my best game. My shots weren’t falling. It’s good the rest of the team picked it up.”

Darrington started out with a box-and-one defense on Woods but then switched to man-to-man.

“Darrington had a really good defensive game,” Woods said. “It definitely gave us a good run. Hopefully we’ll come out strong in our next game.”

The Crusaders improved to 3-0 in the Northwest A/2B League and 9-0 overall, but could have played better.

“We didn’t play as a consistent game as we’d like to,” De Yager said. “The girls were disappointed that they didn’t play as consistent as they can.”

Ott added six points and Holly Novion contributed five. Hailey Wales led Darrington with 12 points.

Shoreline Christian was without guard Sarah Daigneault who suffered an ankle injury while playing soccer.

“You can definitely tell the difference when she’s not there because she’s a really good defensive player,” Woods said.

Shoreline Christian outrebounded Darrington 38-21 and grabbed 17 offensive rebounds.

“I’m particularly pleased with our rebounding,” De Yager said.

Despite losing four starters off last year’s fifth-place state trophy team, the Crusaders are playing well as a team, Woods said.

“We have a good team this year too,” Woods said. “We have a lot of hard workers.”