Coventry tops Pilgrim 52-23

By ALEX SPONSELLER
Posted 1/4/19

The Coventry girls basketball team cruised to a 52-23 win over visiting Pilgrim it’s the clubs’ holiday tournament last week.

The Oakers jumped out to a 20-0 lead and would not look back as …

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Coventry tops Pilgrim 52-23

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The Coventry girls basketball team cruised to a 52-23 win over visiting Pilgrim it’s the clubs’ holiday tournament last week.

The Oakers jumped out to a 20-0 lead and would not look back as they produced on both ends of the floor.

“We had trouble scoring and we played with a lack of confidence. If we think a team is better than us, I’m not sure if we get in our own head, but we play their game instead of playing ours. We couldn’t break their press in the beginning which is something we go over every day in practice, it was basically the fundamentals, we dribbled with our head down. We’ll get back to practice and get better,” said Pilgrim coach Scott Bayha after the loss.

After taking the quick 20-0 lead, Coventry would continue to cruise and take a 26-7 lead into the halftime break.

The Oakers jumped out to a fast start in the second half as well, beginning by going on a 9-2 run in the opening minutes to push the score to 35-9 and put the game out of reach.

Despite falling behind big, the Lady Pats would continue to fight in the remaining minutes and would piece together a 14-9 run midway through the second half. However, Coventry would close the show by going on an 8-0 run to set the score to 52-23 and secure the win.

Kailey Giarusso led the Pats with eight points while Nadine Ongi chipped in seven, which included two 3-pointers in the loss.

Bayha felt that Pilgrim’s stronger second half was a product of hustle, which will be key moving forward.

“I told the girls at half that we are going to need to beat teams with effort and hustle, and if we don’t beat them in that then we will be in trouble. I thought we played with more of that in the second half which made a huge difference … we’re going to have to play with those two things and if we don’t then we’ll be behind the 8-ball,” said Bayha.

The Lady Pats will take on Lincoln on the road on Friday night and then host Mt. Hope early next week.

Despite the tough holiday loss, Bayha is confident that his team has the work ethic and resiliency to turn things around as Pilgrim gets set to enter the midseason grind.

“We have a week now to practice. We’ll go over the fundamentals, breaking the press. We need to get into more of a flow offensively, I think right now we are doing a little bit too much standing around. Things are working for us in practice but practice is different than games … we need to step up our intensity in practice,” said Bayha. “We have great kids here, everyone shows up and everyone works hard so we’ll figure it out, we’ll be ready.”

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