Pioneers take down The Dalles
Angel Rosas
A slow start leads to dominate performance by Sandy's girls basketball at home
Sandy High School girls basketball team took down The Dalles 55-26 with a physical performance at both ends of the court Thursday, Dec. 16.
The Pioneers came into their second home game of the season looking to get straight after a 26-62 loss to Tigard earlier that week.
The Dalles Riverhawks were looking to break a two game losing streak and find their third win.
With a slow start from the Pios it seemed like the Riverhawks had a chance to upset the home team and sneak out with a win. The Sandy girls were flat footed and fumbled the ball away throughout the entire first quarter.
Fortunately, both teams had a tough time scoring with nothing falling. The first quarter would only have the Dalles up 9 - 3.
In the second quarter the momentum shifted dramatically in favor of the Sandy girls as they put up 20 points on the Riverhawks.
Sandy Head Coach Dave Brown said attitude played a big role for the change of play in the second quarter.
"It was all about the energy, when we picked up the intensity we were just a different team," said Brown. "If we come out there with no energy, we aren't a good team. When we got into that press we got a lot more confidence. Once we got out of the zone defense and went to man-coverage things changed."
The change was evident on the court. Sandy denied The Dalles anything in the following quarters except for a few well placed threes.
Sandy sealed its victory with the exceptional play of junior Sydney Brewster and senior Ashley Allinger.
Brewster strung together some great shots in the second half and led the Pios in scoring with 12 points. Brewster was also essential on defense as she brought down everything that didn't make it through the net.
"I definitely work hard for each of those rebounds," said Brewster. "I try hard to be physical and box people out when a shot goes up."
Allinger was a defensive menace on the court on top of putting up nine points on the Riverhawks. Allinger said that defensively the team also started a little slow, but the change of scheme kicked the team into high gear.
"We had a lot of long practices this week and that made us start a little flat," said Allinger. "But going into our press, we really started to focus and you started seeing us get those takeaways."