Balanced Rosary pulls away from Eagles

Updated: March 23, 2011 9:38AM

Scoring balance and good defense will win a team a lot of games.

It worked for Rosary Tuesday night against Aurora Christian in a Suburban Christian Conference crossover game. Five different players put at least seven points in the scorebook and the Royals forced 30 turnovers to pull away to a 52-37 win.

Rosary (7-15) led by just three (13-10) at the end of the first quarter, but used a 14-6 run in the second quarter to push it to 31-18 after Mary Wentworth nailed a 3-pointer with 2:18 to go before halftime. The Royals worked well with that lead as it never went below seven points the rest of the night.

Aurora Christian (4-16) got as close as seven points at 41-34 after two free throws by freshman Alyssa Andersen with 5:24 remaining, but Rosary finished the game on an 11-3 run, going 9-for-10 from the free throw line.

"It seemed like we matched them. If they would score, we would score or we'd get a stop," Rosary coach Dave Beebe said. "I thought about using a couple of timeouts but I wanted to see what the kids could do. We've got four seniors and I'm proud of the way they reacted to (the runs)."

Breann Maryanski led the way for Rosary with 11 points, while Brenda Rocha and Courtney Bila added nine each, with Madison Richmond tossing in seven.

Defensively, the Royals went away from a trap it had used to start the game and switched to a man-to-man. That pressure allowed Rosary to keep the Eagles from taking the ball to the basket and it was also effective at jumping the passing lanes several times to pick up steals.

"We were working on playing together and talking," Rocha said. "I think we were focused on their (outside) shots and we realized we needed to stop their drives and that's where we tightened things up."

Andersen finished with 11 points to pace the Eagles, while Alyssa Henzel scored eight.

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