Lady Indians dominate Stanley Black & Decker Showcase Tournament
by Jamie Harris
In the Stanley Black & Decker Showcase Tournament on Friday night, the Lady Indians opened up with the St. Maria Goretti Lady Gaels. Goretti may have picked a bad night to play ball as Sarah Haynes torched them for 27 points, six assists, 10 steals, seven rebounds, and one blocked shot to pace the Lady Indians to an easy 69-30 victory.
Teammates Casey Solomon added 11 points and 10 rebounds, while Caitlyn Napfel, Cassandra Burch and Lauren Schetrompf added eight apiece, while Kesli Delauter five and Alura Rohm two rounded out the scoring for the Lady Indians.
The Lady Indians used a suffocating defense that forced turnover after turnover for Goretti. Berkeley Springs was able to steal the ball an astounding 30 times in the contest. Behind the defense and the offense syncing the Lady Indians raced to a 30-16 lead and never looked back in the second half.
In the finals matchup Saturday night, the Lady Indians hosted the AAA Jefferson Cougars in a crucial early season match up for Coach McCumbee’s team.
"That has been big since day one," Berkeley Springs Coach Dale McCumbee said. "We have great veteran players with experience, but not a lot of our players on the bench have experience.”
"This tournament showed that for us as against Goretti, Casey Solomon had some foul trouble, and we had to sit her for a quarter and a half, and we weathered that."
The Indians continued with their success of having players fill the holes when Sarah Haynes, the team's leading scorer, got into early foul trouble during a 61-29 victory over Jefferson.
Both sides struggled to make shots early in the contest, but the Indians held on to an 11-8 lead after the first eight minutes, with Caitlyn Napfel setting the pace inside with four points.
"We worked on shooting for about an hour on Friday," Jefferson Coach Chris Custer said. "It's hard to get the ball inside on a 2-3 zone, so we spent that time on it. We ended up getting into a bit of pitch-and-catch and could never find the high post."
Haynes and Solomon led the way for the Indians in the second quarter, scoring 15 of the Tribe's 21 points to increase the lead from three to 16 at halftime.
When Haynes picked up her fourth foul in the third quarter, Solomon scored five points to increase the lead to 21 with eight minutes to play.
Despite being in danger of fouling out, Haynes played four minutes in the fourth quarter, scoring 16 points.
Haynes, who led all scorers with 26 points, including a perfect 10-for-10 effort from the free-throw line, scored 16 points in her final four minutes to stretch the lead to 32 before the final buzzer sounded. She also had four steals and a pair of assists.
Solomon added 12 points and eight rebounds, and Cassandra Burch finished with seven points and eight rebounds.
