Published: December 02, 2008 11:29 pm            

Lions, Lady Lions geared for region play

Christian Heritage basketball enters a new phase of the season when region play begins on Friday — and though their coaches will undoubtedly look to do a little more polishing between now and then, both the Lions and Lady Lions looked ready for the transition on Tuesday.

Christian Heritage swept a home-court matchup with Calhoun’s Georgia Cumberland Academy, with the Lady Lions winning 59-23 before the Lions followed up with a 74-52 victory.

With senior forward Damien Chaney getting extra defensive attention from the Jaguars (3-2) — he still finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and four assists — the Lions (6-1) moved the attack elsewhere at times and Will Clark more than did his part to pick up any slack with 23 points, eight rebounds and five steals.

“I worked a lot in the offseason to try and get my shot better and work on 3s,” said Clark, a junior guard who already had two other efforts of more than 20 points this season. “I knew I had to score a little more this year and I wanted to.”

The Lions trailed just once, and that was briefly and early as Georgia Cumberland took a 3-2 edge in the first minute. Christian Heritage took control from there, putting together scoring runs of 12-4 and 11-4 in the first half for a 36-23 lead at halftime.

And a somewhat sluggish third quarter — the Lions still began the final period with a 49-29 lead — was shaken off with an energetic stretch in the middle of the fourth.

By settling down on defense, the Lions ignited their transition game and went from 51-35 to 66-39 in a span of less than three minutes.

“We just started picking up the intensity and everybody started buying into it,” Clark said. “Once you get a few steals and layups, everybody starts getting pumped up, I guess, and playing a lot better.”

Ben Dindoffer added 11 points — including three 3-pointers — and Tommy Malerbi had eight points for Christian Heritage, which was in action for the first time in more than a week.

The Jaguars’ Jeff Ramsey finished with a team-best 16 points, including three 3-pointers, while Ozzie Walker added nine and Byron Anderson eight.

With their second season of competition in the Georgia Independent Schools Association’s Region 4-2A set to begin against visiting Griffin Christian on Friday, it’s defense that Lions coach Chad Woodson will likely address the most over the next couple of days.

“We’ve still got to get back to practice tomorrow and work on some things defensively,” Woodson said. “We were a little sluggish tonight I think ... hopefully tomorrow we’ll get back and have a good practice.”

That’s fine with Clark.

“Defense was our strength last year,” he said. “This year we’ve been trying to outscore people, which ain’t going to work. We’ve got to start doing better.”

For the Lady Lions (4-0), defense has earned high marks so far this year — and a 16-0 lead to start Tuesday’s win certainly took nothing away from that. Georgia Cumberland (2-3) didn’t manage its first points until more than a minute into the second quarter.

“Our goal right now is to hold every opponent to 43 points,” Christian Heritage coach Heather Lowery said. “We’ve done that so far and I think that tells us we’re playing a whole lot better defense than we did last year. And we pressed better, full-court and half-court, so it was good to see we were able to mix the defenses up a bit.”

Caty Nagel led Christian Heritage with 21 points, Cierra Chaney added eight and Meg Crawford had seven points and five assists. Bradley Townsend grabbed six steals and Kathryn Greene had eight rebounds.

“She’s been stepping up,” Lowery said. “We put a lot of leadership responsibility on her this year after losing (last year’s lone senior and all-time leading scorer Savana Southerland to graduation). I think that helped her and we also have (sophomore point guard Meg Crawford) that steps up and leads on the floor. We just had an all-around effort tonight.”

Despite the 16-0 start, things might have been even better for the Lady Lions, whose pressure defense was producing steals, but not as many points as Lowery would have liked in the first quarter. Some less-than-stellar shooting around the basket was given attention eventually, though.

“That’s one of the things we talked about at halftime,” Lowery said. “We said we’ve got to finish there underneath the basket off the press. That’s one reason why we came back with the press — you don’t want to leave that out there and be stale going into the next game. So we got in there and got some big buckets.”

The Lady Lions, who led 26-10 at halftime, got another solid start in the second half as Nagel scored 10 points during a 12-2 run to begin the third quarter.

“Cierra helped me a lot,” Nagel said. “She gave me a ton of assists, so I think she really stepped it up. Without her assists, I wouldn’t have had any points probably.”

Nagel’s scoring output has already increased this season, Lowery said, with the junior forward eclipsing her 10-point average from 2007 by hovering around the 16- or 17-points per game mark so far.

With steady shooter Maggie Peeples — the team’s leading scorer last season — limited by injury against Georgia Cumberland, Nagel’s output was even more important. Peeples is suffering from turf toe incurred during last Monday’s game against David Brainerd Academy.

Peeples started but played sparingly Tuesday and is being rested in hopes of being able to participate at least close to full speed against Griffin Christian.

“It’s just a nagging injury and it hurts so much to walk on it,” Lowery said. “But it is better ... we just didn’t want to risk injuring it again.”

Almost bookending their big start, the Lady Lions finished the game with a 15-2 run.

• Cartersville girls 72, Southeast 56: Carlee Bragg led three players in double figures with 17 points and the Lady Hurricanes spoiled the Lady Raiders’ Region 6-3A debut.

Christaundra Banks added 14 points and Sydney Jones added 12 for Cartersville, which led 37-26 at halftime.

Briana Sosebee paced the Lady Raiders (2-3, 0-1) with 18 points, five rebounds and two steals. Shelby McFarland added 18 points, five rebounds and two steals. Ashley Strong and Danielle Pearson each scored nine points for Southeast.

• Cartersville boys 66, Southeast 58: After trailing 38-22 at halftime, the Raiders (1-3, 0-1) were able to make a run by outscoring the Hurricanes (1-0, 1-0) in the third and fourth quarters to cut the lead to eight, but it wasn’t enough.

Bradley Grant led the Raiders with 29 points and nine rebounds, while Zach Harper added 12 points and six boards.

JV basketball

• Southeast girls 24, Cartersville 23: The Lady Raiders rallied from a 14-4 first-quarter deficit to win their season opener.

Brianna Coppock had 15 points and five rebounds to lead Southeast and scored what proved to be the winning basket on a layup with about 45 seconds left. Morgan Kendrick had seven points and five rebounds for the Lady Raiders.

        

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