Things didn’t start out the best in the first quarter for the BFA-St. Albans girls basketball team when it hosted U-32 on Friday.
They were committing too many turnovers and their shots weren’t falling, but once the second quarter hit, everything started rolling for the Comets.
The Comets used a solid press forcing U-32 into a number of turnovers and playing solid team basketball on their way to a 44-26 win.
“We weren’t really happy when we came out of the gates in the first quarter,” said BFA coach Paul LaFountain. “We fought through things and started to figure things out toward the end of the second quarter.”
The Comets held a 9-4 lead after a tough first quarter, but turned things up in the second, as they had a 22-9 lead at the half.
MacKenzie Moore tallied all of her game-high 11 points in the first half to help the Comets extend the lead, including back-to-back 3-pointers in the second quarter.
“Mac Moore carried us in that first half,” said LaFountain. “If it wasn’t for her, we would have been tied or down at halftime. Her steals, her rebounding, everything was just working for her in that first half and those back-to-back 3s late were huge.”
The Comets extended to 35-15 by the end of the third quarter with their press causing havoc for U-32 and Caitlyn Dasaro scoring all eight of her points in the frame.
“We just talked about at halftime how if we aren’t going to play with energy like we did in the first half, you aren’t going to be getting the steals in the press,” said LaFountain. “U-32 had a pretty good gameplan to go against the press, so we had to play with a ton of energy and we saw that out of everyone out of the floor in the second half, which was a big difference.”
From there, LaFountain rotated all of his players into the game throughout the rest of the fourth quarter and was impressed with what he saw out of his grouping of Ruby Dasaro, Lauren Kate-Garceau, Loghan Hughers, Bethany Sanders and Cadence Moore and how they ran the defense for the first half of the fourth quarter.
“I’m really happy with the versatility we have on this team and I’m confident with all of the players out on the floor,” said LaFountain. “The first four minutes of that fourth quarter they were kicking butt, which was great to see all them continue to grow. We trust them all to do anything on the floor that our starters can do.”
It was an all-around good, team win for the Comets, who saw eight players score for them.
MacKenzie Moore led the charge with her 11 points followed by Caitlyn Dasaro with eight, Maren McGinn (eight), Pippa Kittell (four), Garceau (four), Sanders (three), Cadence Moore (three) and Iris Burns (three).
“I thought our shot selection was pretty good today playing against a 1-3-1,” said LaFountain. “You have to move the ball around to beat a zone, and I thought we started doing a good job of the late in the second quarter and for the rest of the game.
The Comets improved to 5-2 on the year and will look to make it three wins in a row when they host Colchester on Monday.
“We just have to keep being consistent,” said LaFountain. “The first quarter wasn’t the greatest, and against good teams, we can’t have that, so we will have to keep stressing consistency going forward.”
Northwest Vermont Sports 