Short-handed Batavia struggles with Marist duo
A depleted Batavia girls basketball team was unable to handle Marist's 1-2 punch in a Montini Christmas Tournament opening round game on Wednesday.
Four-year starting seniors Hailey Orman and Geddy Rerko are out with injuries which made it even tougher for the Bulldogs to stop the Redhawks' Sydney Affolter and Abby Callahan.
Affolter and Callahan, whose uniform numbers are 1 and 2, respectively, combined for 39 points in Marist's 64-35 victory.
Batavia (6-9) will face Hersey Thursday in a consolation quarterfinal. The Huskies lost 68-41 to Montini.
"It was a tough matchup for us based on who we had available today and how we were going to match up," said Batavia coach Kevin Jensen about defending Affolter and Callahan. "Because of their skill set and their position, they put us in a couple of awkward matchups at times. They are really talented players."
"Affolter is a sophomore and she has a lot of offers from Division 1 schools," Marist coach Mary Pat Connolly said. "Callahan is a senior and she is the glue for our team, a captain and a leader. She just plays so hard."
Affolter's opening 3-point basket 20 seconds into the game gave Marist (12-2) the lead which it never relinquished. The sophomore scored a game-high 25 points.
The Redhawks led 15-7 after the first quarter and widened the lead to 28-19 at halftime.
The third quarter started as a 3-point shooting contest between Affolter and Batavia's Erin Golden. The two guards each drained two treys to open the frame. Golden scored a team-high 14 points.
The quarter ended with Marist's 19-5 run to put the Redhawks up 53-30. Six points came from Callahan, who finished the game with 14.
"We try to be pretty aggressive in our pressing system and try to generate points off of it," Connolly said. "We finally broke it open a little bit in the third quarter."
Connolly did not think the game was one of her team's best efforts.
"I don't think we had our best game today, but I think Batavia had some tires missing if I'm not mistaken," the Marist coach said. "We'll take the win."
Batavia's lack of experience impacted the offense as well.
"We are a little undermanned right now and instead of two more seniors in our starting lineup, we are playing a couple of young pups. Even the best teams have their ups and downs and it's even sometimes bigger swings with some of our younger ones," Jensen said. "This lineup looked pretty solid the last couple of games. Today some of our youth showed a little bit. We had a hard time getting anything going offensively. We didn't do a good job of taking care of the ball."