Wednesday, February 21st, 2007
New Bremen makes quick work of LTC
By Mark Ruschau
LIMA - The second-seeded New Bremen Cardinals used a huge second quarter on both ends of the court to overcome a sluggish start and rolled to an 82-27 drubbing of the Lima Temple Christian Pioneers in the opening round of the Division IV sectional tournament at Bath High School.
The Cardinals will take an 11-10 mark to the sectional finals on Saturday at approximately 8 p.m. against the Ada Bulldogs while Lima Temple Christian ends its season at 4-17.
After shooting just 3-for-15 from the floor and leading just 8-6 after the first eight minutes, New Bremen cranked up its pressure defense and outscored the Pioneers 31-7 in the second period to turn the game into a rout.
On the defensive end, the Cardinals held Lima Temple Christian to just 3-of-8 shooting and they forced 12 turnovers in the period. New Bremen converted the miscues into 21 points.
On the offensive end, New Bremen hit 11-of-19 shots from the floor in the period and they added 9-of-10 from the free-throw line.
The Cardinals turned the ball over just once in the period as Stacy Timmerman led the way in the period with 12 points.
For the game, Lima Temple Christian turned the ball over 39 times and shot just 32 percent from the floor.
"It is tough to play a game like we played and have it be pretty because if you don't come in focused you look bad like we did at the start of the game. If we play our game, which is a fullcourt game and a run-and-gun, which we were able to play in the second period, then it looks like we are being bullies, so this was a tough game for us to play," said New Bremen boss Dave McFeely. "We moved a couple of extra players up, including a couple of freshmen so that we could have more depth and rotate people in and out more.
"We only had 14 turnovers and I venture to say that a majority of them came in the first quarter," continued McFeely. "Early in the first period I got mad and took out the first unit and put the second group in and that kind of refocused them."
With the game in hand at the half, McFeely called off the dogs as he allowed all 13 players on the roster to play and he was rewarded as 12 of the players dented the scoring column.
"Our goal was to come in here, get our starters some work and get our backups some work too, get used to the floor and do a lot of rotating at the end," said Mc Feely. "We played 10 of the 12 in the first half and we got all 12 in during the second half.
Christine Schwartz led New Bremen with a game-high 17 points and Timmerman chipped in 16 while Jaclyn Dabbelt added 10.