The Pleasant Hill Billies girls basketball team took care of business on Friday night, crushing the Creswell Bulldogs 44-21. For the Billies, it was a particularly great showing on the defensive end as they notched a plethora of turnovers and held the Bulldogs to just five points in the first half.
“The past week or two, the message to our players has been (that) we do play a solid 2-3 zone. We have a lot of length, we have a lot of girls that will go get a rebound and that’s all great, but there does come a point where you’ve gotta be able to play straight up five-on-five man-to-man,” Pleasant Hill head coach Paxton Miller said. “…So I thought tonight was our best effort of the season of flying around, jumping to the basketball, getting in passing lanes and making multiple efforts defensively.”
Pleasant Hill’s dominance wasn’t only apparent on the defensive end either, as offensively they couldn’t miss. Leading the way on this end was the Billies’ sisters, Claire and Anna Crawford, who combined for 27 of the Billies 38 points through the first three quarters. In the process Claire was able to show off her range, knocking down one of her two three-point attempts in the second quarter.

CRAIG STROBECK / THE CHRONICLE PHOTO
“We worked on (her shot) a lot this summer,” said Miller. “Her shooting has improved a ton if she shoots it with confidence. So if she’s open, the message to her is if it’s a quality shot you’ve gotta let it fly.”
On the other end, head coach Tyler Hollingsworth and the Creswell Bulldogs look at this game as a lesson on handling pressure.
“We’ve gotta handle pressure and we’ve gotta know when we’re getting pressured,” Hollingsworth said. “To their credit they played man, and we’ve played against zone for the last six games which is a bit different. I’ve gotta do a better job getting them ready to play against man.”

CRAIG STROBECK / THE CHRONICLE PHOTO
The Bulldogs entered this game with a noticeable size disadvantage. Despite this, Hollingsworth argues it didn’t play much of a role in this game.
“I don’t think it did (play a factor) honestly,” said Hollingsworth. “I think the biggest disadvantage was they were more physical than we were. In the last four or five games we have been the team that was more physical, and we didn’t respond well to their physicality so credit to them for being more physical.”
It wasn’t all bad for the Bulldogs, though. No matter what the score said, Creswell was fighting until the final buzzer as they soared for rebounds and hit the ground for loose balls.
“We talk about standard, we try to play to a standard, not a score,” Hollingsworth said. “So we’re always gonna play hard, box out, we talked about it all week boxing out. I thought we did a pretty decent job (at that) today, it’s just hard to look at that when you turn the ball over so many times.”
As the season continues, Pleasant Hill remains a perfect 5-0 in league play, with a current 10-game-winning streak to boast as well. On the other side of the coin, this marks Creswell’s first Mountain Valley Conference loss. Both teams continue their season on Jan. 31 as the Billies take on Elmira, and the Bulldogs face La Pine.