Through one week of the regular season, the Cazenovia girls basketball team is 2-0, largely due to its defense.
The Lakers easily won an early-season battle of Class B girls’ basketball unbeatens Friday night, 44-20, over its Madison County neighbors from Chittenango.
Cazenovia was never threatened on this night. The Lakers defense did not let the Bears do much, and the visitors led 12-2 after one quarter, and 23-7 at halftime.
The Bears (2-1) couldn’t overcome their sloppy start.
“We knew there was a chance of that happening,” Chittenango coach Christian Rohrer said. “We knew (Cazenovia) was going to press us the whole game. If we couldn’t break it we knew we were in for it. We couldn’t break it.”
Lakers point guard Kristie Kleine, a big part of her squad’s harassing full-court press, keyed Cazenovia’s early offensive surge. Kleine dropped in a pair of first quarter three point field goals.
The lopsided win didn’t mean the Cazenovia players got off lightly when it came to coach Chris Carpenter’s postgame speech.
“The overall effort was good as far as defense,” Carpenter said. “Offensively, (it was) just terrible. We really had a rough time out there getting into anything that we’ve worked on three weeks now. It’s frustrating.”
Kleine led the winners with a game high 16 points. Maggie Carpenter had nine. Taylor Mimms and Maggie Johnson scored seven and five points respectively Kaitlin Antelmi led Chittenango with 14 points.
Chris Carpenter is the Lakers’ third different coach in as many years, and he won his debut last Wednesday night at Buckley Gym, Cazenovia toughing out a 39-33 victory over Marcellus.
Looking to improve on last winter’s 5-13 struggles, Cazenovia went back to emphasizing the tough defensive approach that worked so well in back-to-back sectional title runs in 2010 and ’11.
Against Marcellus, it worked again. The Mustangs never scored double-digit points in any quarter until the fourth, by which point Cazenovia, with its own modest attack, had gained a 33-22 edge.
Maggie Carpenter led the way, earning 15 points, and got ample support from Sally Langan, who added 10 points. For the Mustangs, Lauren Soule led with 14 points.
Before the loss to Cazenovia, Chittenango had moved to 2-0 on the young season last Tuesday night by going to Jordan-Elbridge and flattening the Eagles 73-18.
Catching a J-E side still recovering from the graduation of star center Molly Hourigan (who is now at Holy Cross), the Bears did whatever it wanted on offense in the first quarter with an astonishing 32 points.
And it continued all the way to halftime, where the Bears led 56-11. Kaitlin Antelmi set a career mark with 28 points, 10 more than the entire J-E roster, while Sierra Shafer and Kate Boyer both finished with 12 points. Sarah Moon added six points.
The Bears had to go to red-hot Skaneateles on Tuesday before returning home Friday to get its own shot at Marcellus. On those same nights, Cazenovia would host Phoenix and visit J-E.
