sports@southwesttimes.com
ROANOKE – The Lady Cougar basketball team opened up their run for a district crown on Wednesday, impressively defeating Cave Spring on the road for their fifth consecutive victory, 65-33.
It was a tale of two teams – Pulaski (5-7, 1-0) was on a four game winning streak and Cave Spring (0-11, 0-1) was on a ten game losing streak. Both teams would look to either continue or break those streaks.
The Cougars started off slow and struggled to find their offensive stroke. However, Raiven Patterson would carry her team early with eight of the first nine Pulaski points. Cave Spring would build up a 10-5 lead, but Patterson and teammate Shaniqua Banks would score a combined three lay ups to cut the lead to 13-11 after one.
Cave and Pulaski matched up very evenly to start the second quarter, but the Lady Cougars would play aggressive offensively and defensively. With the score tied 15-15 after a Banks lay up, Pulaski would score 11 straight points.
An already injured squad who were down both Brittany Lawson and Alexis McCloud, Pulaski would lose another key contributor to the team. Shaniqua Banks, who had led the team in scoring for the last four games, would land awkwardly on her left knee after a block on a Cave Spring defender. She would be carried off the court by a trainer and Coach Jason Grubb.
“Anytime a kid goes down, your first thought is that you hope she is going to be ok and the injury isn’t going to be that serious,” said Cougars coach Jason Grubb. “Quite honestly, we don’t know what happened to her. We’ll just have to see what the trainer says and what the hospital says. Hopefully, it’s going to be something that’s not too serious and won’t take too long for her to come back.”
Despite that loss, the Cougars continued on and took a 26-17 lead into halftime. Pulaski’s defense only allowed six points total in the second quarter.
Cave Spring would rally out of the halftime break. After a Daisy Ball lay up, the Knights would score five points and pull back into the game, 28-22. Dani Duff had two scores in the run for Cave Spring.
The deficit remained ten points for the Knights, but a key foul would change the momentum in the game. Lauren Markey, who had scored six points up to that moment in the game, picked up her fourth foul. That took away a key offensive weapon for the Knights.
Pulaski would capitalize and score ten straight points and extend the lead from 32-24 to 42-24. Kasey Holcomb had five points in the run, Hannah Chaffin had a three-pointer, and Sydney Anderson had two.
That momentum carried all the way to the end of the quarter, as the Cougars took a 49-26 win after three quarters. Pulaski would keep up the intensity in the fourth quarter and continued the pressure off of their full court press.
“We started off and were trying to do a few new things that we had worked on in practice,” Grubb said. “We wanted to see how we would do them on the court. We were executing ok in the zone press we had been working on, but they were prepared for it and were breaking it easy. They were getting some good looks on the other end. We would get the ball back and weren’t hitting shots in the first quarter. We decided to go back to our normal man pressure and that’s what changed the game.”
Cave Spring would fight back in the form of creating fouls and free throw attempts. Tori Doyle would go to the line four times and Meredith Young went to the line once, giving the Knights nine free throw opportunities. They would make six of those attempts and keep their hopes of a comeback alive.
In the end though, the Cougar lead grew, as every Pulaski player scored. Kasey Holcomb led the Cougars in scoring with 11 points. She also had four assists. Raiven Patterson scored ten points, grabbed six rebounds, had six steals, and two assists.
Daisy Ball had nine points and three rebounds. Hannah Chaffin also scored nine points and had four rebounds. Kelli Duncan led the Cougars in rebounding with seven boards.
“I think this was the most important game of the season up to this point,” Grubb said. “You talk about scrimmages, early games in the season, and holiday tournaments. All of those things are important, but really everything we do is for preparation in district. Now, the most important game is Friday’s game against Christiansburg. We were able to keep our winning streak alive and be 1-0 in the district, so that’s great.”
The junior varsity squad extended their winning streak to eight games, defeating Cave Spring, 46-14. The Cougars started out with a 16 straight points and didn’t allow a single Knight score.
Cave Spring came back in the second to score seven points and only allowed one Cougar score. They would still be down at halftime, 18-7.
Pulaski would power out in the third quarter and take over the game. A 14 point scoring effort in the third would help to seal the deal. They would follow that up with 14 more points in the fourth quarter and only allowed seven Cave Spring second half points.
Savannah Jones and Carli Brewer led in scoring with eight points. Jordan Chrisley, Lauren Foster, Tori Duncan, and Mikayla Smariege all scored six points in what was a balanced game for the team.
The Cougars varsity will look to extend their five game streak into six when they host Christiansburg at home on Friday. The junior varsity, who are looking for their ninth straight win, play at 6 p.m. with the varsity to follow at 7:30 p.m.
(1-7-2010)
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