Step right up

NEW BREMEN - St. Marys' game plan against New Bremen was to shut down Kelly Naylor and force others to step up.

So Madison Cordonnier and Kayla Bergman stepped up.

Cordonnier scored a game-high 15 points and Bergman added 12 as the Cardinals separated themselves from the Roughriders by outscoring them 30-18 after halftime for a 47-36 victory in New Bremen.

"I just thought they hit some big shots," St. Marys coach Jonathan Burke said. "We were trying to take away Naylor and I thought we played pretty good defense on her. (Cordonnier) made some big shots in the mid-range. We said going in that if they are going to beat us, then those are the shots they're going to have to make. We weren't going to let Naylor drive to the rim and take wide-open shots. We're going to let someone step up. I thought (Cordonnier) stepped up. I thought Bergman had a good game, too."

Naylor, New Bremen's leading scorer with an average of 11.2 points per game, finished with just three points. But she was on the bench for most of the opening half due to foul trouble and eventually picked up her fifth foul late in the fourth.

New Bremen (10-4) opened the game with a 9-1 run. The Cardinals finished 5 of 12 shooting in the first quarter. Hanna Tenkman and Cordonnier each hit 3-pointers while Ellie Roetgerman supplied four points off the bench as New Bremen held a 13-6 lead after the eight minutes.

The Cardinals, however, went just 2 of 12 from the field in quarter two. St. Marys won the quarter 12-4. Lauren Cisco hit a pair of triples in the half for St. Marys (5-8), which gained its first lead with 1:47 remaining after four straight points from Noelle Ruane.

But Cordonnier and Bergman combined to make four straight shots as part of a 9-2 run to open the third quarter that returned control to New Bremen. Bergman scored eight of her 12 in the quarter and Cordonnier netted seven.

"We talked at halftime that we kind of needed to (get the ball down low) to get our offense going," New Bremen coach Chris Burden said. "The last couple of games we've been struggling from the field. What better way to get your offense going than to get those bunny shots. Just the way they play their defense, we knew we needed to get the ball inside. We knew we had a mismatch there. Credit to our girls for following the game plan in the second half."

New Bremen held a 34-28 lead after the third, but Cisco knocked down her third trey to start the fourth. The score never got closer, though. The Cardinals followed with a 7-0 run, capped by a Naylor steal and layup that stretched their lead to 41-31 with four minutes remaining.

Bergman had a game-high 10 rebounds to secure a double-double. Cordonnier collected eight boards for New Bremen, which won the rebounding battle 39-34 and made 18 of 49 shots.

"I told the girls after the game that this is the first time in a really long time that we had to play a quarter without our point guard because of foul trouble," Burden said. "It just showed the togetherness of our team that we can play without our point guard. Even though it was tough and it wasn't pretty, we were able to survive that. We scored enough points there at the end to get the win."

Cisco had 13 points and Ruane netted 12 for St. Marys, which finished 13 of 49 shooting.

"Sometimes shots drop for you and sometimes they don't," Burke said. "I thought we were attacking the paint pretty well tonight, but we got away from that at times and lost our rhythm. We've got some things we need to improve on. We're not where we want to be for February, and we know that. But we've got to look at this as an opportunity to grow."

Each team returns to league action on Thursday. New Bremen visits Parkway and St. Marys hosts Kenton.