Columbus East went through an offense drought to start the second half of Saturday night’s girls basketball against Eastern (Pekin) that forced coach Danny Brown to call a quick 30-second timeout to recollect his team.
That paid off in a huge way when the Olympians went on a huge 17-2 scoring run in the late third and early fourth quarters to win comfortably over the Musketeers 42-30.
The win snapped a four game losing skid for East.
As much as the scoring run helped, it was the overall defensive effort that put the Olympians over the top.
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“It was a great team defensive effort. We’ve been working hard on it,” Brown said. “They came out for the most part putting pressure on them. We were in a situation where we had fouls to give, and that is a good situation to have, a double-digit lead and fouls to give, and that was the situation we put ourselves in, so that’s great team defense.”
East (8-6) started out a bit slow and found itself trailing 6-3, but came back to end the first quarter on a 6-0 run to lead 9-6. Eastern (9-7) cut it to 13-11 midway through the second quarter, but Saige Stahl provided a spark off the bench, scoring the Olympians final five points in the first half to give them and 18-11 lead. However, Shelby Casey hit a 3-pointer from the right side at the buzzer to cut the Musketeers deficit to 18-14 at halftime.
Six different Olympians got into the scoring column in the first half, with Stahl leading the way with seven first-half points.
The offense started to stagnate a bit for East to start the second half, which allowed Eastern to score six straight points that was capped off with an Isabell Claywell 3-pointer to give the Musketeers a 20-18 lead to force an Olympian timeout.
The timeout proved effective when East went on a 12-2 run to take a 30-22 lead that forced an Eastern timeout in hopes to slow the Olympians momentum. Katie Dougherty hit a couple of 3s during the run to help turn the tide. The score remained 30-22 over the course of the final minute heading into the fourth.
Whitley Rankin hit a 3-pointer, and a layup from Dougherty extended the lead to 35-22 to essentially put the game away.
“The team brought a lot of energy into the game,” Dougherty said. “We started executing our offense more.”
Stahl finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds to lead East. Dougherty added nine points, and Gabby Dean had nine blocks.
“Katie hit a couple of big shots for us to give us a little breathing room,” Brown said. “Saige played a heck of a game. She was really aggressive for us tonight.”
The Olympians’ top player, Koryn Greiwe, was quiet in the boxscore, scoring only four points, but Brown admired her effort away from the points.
“Koryn played a good floor game. They were all over her. I give her a lot of credit for being unselfish. She was very unselfish tonight,” Brown said. “She could have looked to score a lot more, but she was in the flow of the game and controlling the ball, played great defense. She’s not just a great scorer. She can do other things, and she showed that tonight.”
