Winning 'Skins

ST. MARYS - It's been a long time since St. Henry has had a winning season in girls basketball.

Fifteen years to be exact.

The Redskins officially guaranteed themselves a winning season on Saturday with a 50-42 victory over St. Marys at Murotech Court.

Nikki Keller scored 11 of her team-high 14 points in the second half as the Redskins improved to 12-8 on the campaign.

"I started to look back (at the history) because I want the girls to be super proud of where they're at," said first-year St. Henry head coach Wendi Moorman. "We're starting to build and starting to develop the program."

The 2002-03 St. Henry team was the last team to surpass 12 victories, finishing 16-7. The best record from 2002-03 to present had been an 11-11 finish in the 2008-09 season.

Win No. 12 wasn't an easy one to get by any means.

St. Henry led 13-7 after one quarter and 20-12 at halftime, but the Roughriders (8-11) came alive in the third quarter.

Makenna Mele scored six points and Sydney Cisco added four as the Roughriders opened the third quarter on a 10-3 run to pull within one at 23-22. Cisco - who scored 11 points in the third - eventually gave St. Marys the lead with her second 3-pointer of the quarter.

"(Cisco) is a great shooter," Moorman said. "We always need to know where she's at on the floor - and even with a hand in her face, she's draining them. She's a phenomenal basketball player. All week we talked about knowing where Cisco's at. Sometimes we didn't get through those switches and she got those shots off. That's a tremendous effort on her part.

"Defense wins game," Moorman added. "We had a lull during the third quarter. We sat down during a timeout and said 'Okay, we need to step it up.' And they did."

However, Mele was forced to sit out the rest of the game after suffering a leg injury midway through the third quarter.

And then Keller went to work on the inside.

Keller scored six points in the third quarter to help St. Henry take a 32-29 lead going into the fourth. She scored two buckets in the first 1 1/2 minutes of the fourth, and Cora Stammen added a bucket extend the lead to 38-29.

"We knew we could go inside and we needed to use that to our advantage, and it worked," Moorman said. "(Keller) did a great job around the bucket and finished on those shots, where maybe in the first half, we didn't get those shots to go. We really did a great job executing in the second half."

Nora Vaughn followed with another basket for St. Henry and Stammen cashed a 3 to put St. Henry back on top by double digits just three minutes into the fourth.

Cisco scored five in a row to cut the deficit to 43-36 halfway through the quarter, but the score never got closer. St. Henry shot just 50 percent from the free throw line for the game but hit 7-of-11 in the fourth to secure the victory.

"It's important to make free throws down the stretch," Moorman said. "We're usually about 70 percent from the line, so to shoot 50 percent from the line is not great for us. But we made them when we needed to."

Allison Siefring added 10 points for St. Henry.

Cisco scored a game-high 22 points for St. Marys, surpassing 900 points for her career (901). Mele contributed nine points.

St. Henry and St. Marys are both in action on Thursday. The Redskins travel to face MAC-leading Versailles. St. Marys travels to face Grand Lake rival Celina in WBL play.