BULLDOGS BREANNA DAPRON DRIVES THE LANE AS BILLIES ALEXA ELLIS REACHES IN DURING THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE CRESWELL VS PLEASANT HILL MATCHUP ON JAN. 22. THE CRESWELL BULLDOGS LOST TO THE PLEASANT HILL BILLIES 33-57 AND HAVE A CURRENT OVERALL SEASON RECORD OF 6-11. Christopher Palanuk / The Creswell Chronicle
Although they have yet to secure a league basketball win this season, the Creswell Lady Bulldogs got better offensive production last week despite falling to visiting Pleasant Hill, 33-57 and host La Pine, 41-47.
Creswell trailed Pleasant Hill just 10-13 after the first quarter and 20-24 at halftime. But the seventh-ranked Billies outscored the Lady Dawgs 22-8 in the third quarter and 15-5 in the final period to ice the victory.
”We played really hard for the first half and pretty well, for the most part,” said Creswell Head Coach Tyler Hollingsworth. ”But it’s going to take a full game like that to compete with them, and we got two-and-a-half quarters of that before it slipped away.”
Hollingsworth said fatigue hampered the Lady Dawgs as the game went on, and as a result, ”we started turning the ball over more and our defensive energy dropped.”
Twelve of Creswell’s 17 turnovers came in the second half, while Billies guard Hannah Way took advantage of second-half defensive lags to get to the hoop for 17 of her game-high 23 points.
Aubrie Hatch and Freya DeMasters paced Creswell with 12 points and three rebounds apiece. Bailey Howell tallied an impressive eight blocks along with four points, four rebounds and three assists.
At La Pine, the Lady Dawgs led 8-7 after one, but were outscored by the Hawks 19-12 in the second quarter to trail 20-26 at halftime and 30-37 after three.
”We fouled a lot on shots, which didn’t help, but the biggest factor was that we gave up a lot of offensive rebounds for a lot of second-chance opportunities,” Hollingsworth said. ”We were in position to block out, we just didn’t.”
The Hawks grabbed eight offensive boards in the second quarter alone and scored 15 second-chance points in the game.
Despite not blocking out, Creswell kept the score close in the first half; but the combination of second-chance points and defensive breakdowns proved deadly in the second half.
”In the first half, we played decent defense, but in the second half our defense was not good enough to stop them,” Hollingsworth said.
Hatch paced Creswell with 14 points and four rebounds; DeMasters had nine points and three rebounds; and Howell added eight points, 10 rebounds and five blocks.
Now 0-6, the Lady Dawgs are hungry for their first league win as they travel to Harrisburg and host Santiam Christian this week.
”Offensively, we’ve been able to move the ball a bit better and open up some more scoring opportunities, but our defense has been slipping a little bit,” Hollingsworth said. ”The girls are still fighting, so that’s good, and hopefully we can get both things working for us at the same time this week.”
