Women’s Norwood Flames vs Forestville Eagles
The girls have had a disappointing start to the season coming into this game 0-3. The Forestville Eagles are 2-1 coming off a big win against the Southern Tigers. The Eagles have been spectacular this season defensively, limiting their opposition to less than 60 points in both of their wins. The girls will have to play stellar offence to get the upper hand in this game.
The game started with the Eagles firing offensively, draining two tough triples back to back, igniting a 12-2 run. Isabella Stratford finally broke the run and Emily Winter followed her bucket with an and-1 to get our offence running. Both teams were playing great defence from this point, scoring coming to a halt as many bad shots and turnovers were forced for both teams. The girls forced their way to the line to keep the scoreboard ticking before the Eagles finally hit another shot and a couple of free throws to end the quarter, the Flames trailing 21-10.
Again, the quarter opened with the Eagles having an offensive spark, 9-2 was the opening run before a time-out from coach Richard Dickel led to a quick bucket for the Flames. This started a small run for Norwood, bringing some much-needed scoring to the game capped off again by another big and-1 for Emily Winter. From this point, the Eagles’ defence was again in full effect forcing the Flames to operate in late shot-clock situations, scoring almost exclusively from the free-throw line. The Eagles’ offence came alive to end the quarter with another 7-0 in the last minute, bringing the score to 45-24 at the end of the half.
The Eagles’ offence was at its best at the start of quarters, another 8-2 run opened the third. The girls responded with a quick 6-0 run and applied necessary pressure on the Eagles’ defence. This pressure led to the Eagles’ overreacting on defence, rotating too hard, sending 2 at the ball in inopportune scenarios and creating holes that the Flames could exploit. Still, the pure effort the Eagles were demonstrating transferred onto the offensive end, they scored efficiently and ended the quarter up 64-41.
The fourth quarter opened the opposite to all the others, with Norwood going on a 7-0 run and forcing a timeout from the Eagles coach. Coming out of the timeout both teams were firing, scoring back and forth and showing how effective they both could be on that end of the court. The Flames continued to exploit holes in the Eagles’ defence, showing their versatility and ability to react mid-game to pressure and opposing game plans. The girls won the last quarter and should be able to take the momentum experienced in this last quarter into their next game, the final score of this one was 81-61.
