Girls Basketball: Jackie Cardona fuels Aurora Central past Rosary

Updated: January 28, 2012 5:23PM

Falling behind by 11 points in the first three minutes against your rivals, on the road no less, is no recipe to start a game.

But this is a new era for Aurora Central’s girls basketball team.

The Chargers chipped away at Rosary’s lead, taking the lead for good early in the second quarter, and never looked back in a 57-44 Suburban Christian Conference win Saturday.

“The heart of a good team is a team that can come back, can take a good punch, and we took several, and then just chip away a little bit, like we did,” Aurora Central coach Mark Fitzgerald said. “This is a veteran team and they didn’t let it get them down. They very easily could have. For a change, I decided to be quiet and let them work their way out of it, and they did. I’m very pleased with their performance, sans the first four minutes.”

The game started well for Rosary (9-15, 3-6), a team which became accustomed to dominating Aurora Central (19-5, 5-3) in the past. Five points from Taylor Gibson keyed the opening 11-0 run.

“It was a good start,” Rosary coach Dave Beebe said. “We got the start we wanted. We talked to them before the game about playing four complete quarters, and we played one complete quarter.”

The Chargers didn’t score until the 4:20 mark of the first quarter, but they got to work quickly. They scored six points in a span of four seconds, as Kaitlyn Rosa drove in for a layup, was fouled, and hit the free throw. Jackie Cardona then stole the inbound pass and laid it in, also converting a free throw. By the end of the first quarter, the Rosary lead was cut to 15-12.

Tesa Alderman’s three-pointer with 5:40 left in the second quarter gave Aurora Central a 19-18 lead, a play Beebe called the critical play of the game, and the Chargers never trailed again. That three came as part of a 21-5 run to close out the half, which ended with Aurora Central up, 33-22.

“We just calmed down our nerves and started to play our game,” Cardona said. “I think we were over-pumped for this game. We came out with too much energy.”

Helping the Chargers ice the game was their free throw shooting. They got to the line a whopping 33 times, hitting 26 of them. Cardona led the way, hitting 11-of-12 from the stripe en route to a game-high 16 points. Alderman and Rosa were a combined 9-for-9 from the free-throw line.

“They got more points from the line than we did in a half,” Beebe lamented. “Credit to them; that’s good free-throw shooting on their part. They hit them.”

Rosa scored 13 points to go with eight rebounds for the Chargers. Alex DeCraene added 11 points off the bench in the win. Courtney Bila and Karly Tate each scored 10 points to pace Rosary.

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