COAL TOWNSHIP - For two and a half quarters, Saturday's championship game of the 18th annual Lourdes Tip-Off Tournament was a good, old-fashioned Schuylkill League slugfest.
Over the final 12 minutes, Marian's depth and the hot shooting of senior Gabby Green proved to be too much for Lourdes to overcome.
Green finished with a game-high 21 points as the Fillies downed the Red Raiders 55-42.
Green hit three 3-pointers in the span of a minute to take Marian from a two-point deficit to a four-point lead and the Fillies never looked back.
"They have a lot of weapons to choose from,"
Lourdes head coach Mike Klembara said. "We gave them all they could handle for two-plus quarters. That might have been the toughest battle they'll see all year, but once we got tired and fatigued, we weren't playing defense the way we wanted to."
The Red Raiders started the game by forcing Marian's shooters into questionable shots from outside the arc, but progressively those shots started dropping. Marian's shooting percentage went from 20 percent in the first quarter to 66 in the fourth.
Lourdes' shooting, as you might guess, went down during the game. Bailey Trell started the Red Raiders off on the right foot, scoring nine of Lourdes' 13 first-quarter points. Trell finished with 17 to lead Lourdes.
The Red Raiders then extended their lead from 13-6 after the first frame to 22-11 midway through the second, but Marian closed the second quarter with a 13-5 run and that carried over after the break.
What tripped up the Red Raiders more than anything was Trell, leading rebounder Caity Funk (eight boards) and sixth-man Angelique Pennypacker all picking up three fouls apiece in the first half.
"I was really proud of our kids," Klembara said. "They played hard against one of the top three or four Class A teams in the state. I thought we ran out of gas. It was a physical game. Their bench is very, very deep; our bench is not so deep.
"I told the girls at halftime that the biggest part of second half could be the first four minutes and it was because that's when we found ourselves behind."
After Green's run of 3s, the Fillies went cold and left the door open for Lourdes, which followed with a stretch of six turnovers and two missed shots and never got closer than 37-33 before Marian closed the third quarter with 10 straight points.
"We have to play a little better defensively from a discipline standpoint," Klembara said. "We got a little too agressive and left some holes instead of keeping the play in front of us and make them work for baskets. We didn't do a great job of identifying the 3-point shooters. I'm pretty sure at the end of the year we're not going to make the mistakes we made in this game.
"We know we can play with the rest of the teams in our league."
On the strength of Olivia Bonshock's 18 points, Shamokin beat Sunbury Christian 50-22 in the consolation game. Eight Indians in all scored.
Championship game
MARIAN (55) - Green 7 2-4 21, Whildin 1 1-4 3, Whitecavage 2 0-0 5, Sofranko 2 1-1 5, Baranko 3 0-0 6, Krusinsky 3 2-5 8, Holman 2 3-4 7. Totals 20 9-19 55.
LOURDES (42) - Bickel 3 0-0 8, Trell 8 0-0 17, Schultz 2 6-7 10, Long 2 0-2 4, Funk 0 2-2 2, Pennypacker 0 1-2 1, Wheary 0 0-0 0, Komara 0 0-0 0, DeLong 0 0-0 0, Khana 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 9-19 55.
3-point FGs: Green 5, Whitecavage, Bickel 2, Trell.