Girls Basketball: Trinity blows by Morgan Park

Updated: November 29, 2011 9:51PM

A two-week layoff between games didn’t seem to bother No. 5 Trinity Tuesday against visiting Morgan Park, except perhaps at the free-throw line.

“Last year, I shot a lot of free throws,” said Trinity’s Megan Podkawa, who contributed to the Blazers’ less-than-dazzling 4 of 15 effort from the stripe by misfiring on all but one of her five attempts. “I was just off today. I shot 20-for-20 when I was warming up.”

Despite their woes from the free-throw line, Trinity had it going everywhere else. Podkawa led four players in double figures with 17 points and five rebounds as the Blazers overwhelmed No. 12 Morgan Park 62-35.

Podkawa scored Trinity’s first four points as the hosts raced to a 9-0 lead. But the 6-foot-1 DePaul-bound forward did not score again the remainder of the first half.

“We had a lot of time off, so it might have affected my shot,” Podkawa said. “But we have a lot of top players on our team. Everybody is really talented. If I’m not playing well, I know they’ll be there to step up and take control of the game.”

Shannon McGinnis (11 points), Taylor Nazon (10) and Alyssa Dengler (10) picked up the slack for Trinity, leading the Blazers to a 28-14 halftime lead despite their 3 of 13 performance from the free-throw line during the first 24 minutes.

“In practice, we’ve been working so much on defense and offense to make sure we had it down pat, we probably did not work on fundamentals as much,” Dengler said. “But we’ll be fine. I don’t think the layoff bothered us. The coaches kept us in it, pushing us.”

Morgan Park (4-3) briefly got within 31-20 early in the second quarter, but 6-foot-1 senior center Gabrielle Richmond, who played sparingly in the first half, appeared to reinjure the left knee that sidelined her at Geneva last week and exited the game. She did not return.

The prognosis was not good, said Morgan Park coach Thomas Johnson.

“I think she’s done,” he said. “We’ll see. We’ll get an MRI tomorrow.”

Morgan Park got 11 points from Kendyl Nunn and 10 off the bench from junior guard Kiara Carter.

“We didn’t do a good job of rebounding,” Johnson said. “We knew they were a very good rebounding team and we just didn’t block anybody out. Trinity is a very good team. They scouted us a few times and they knew what we were doing.”

If Richmond cannot return this season, Morgan Park may have to turn to 6-foot freshman Marsha Howard.

“She’s going to have become a junior by tomorrow because we start our conference tomorrow,” Johnson said. “Hopefully, we’ll be all right.”

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