Hennessee’s 24 leads girls hoops to 65-52 victory over Mount
Pleasant.
GILROY – With first-year head coach Kari Williams dealing with a case of the butterflies prior to the start of the Gilroy High girls basketball team’s first-round playoff game, the Lady Mustangs eased all tensions early on en route to a commanding 65-52 home win over No. 13 Mount Pleasant.
“It’s a good win for us. I think I was more nervous than the girls. I got a little butterflies there before the game,” said Williams, following Wednesday’s CCS victory. “We said we needed to control it from the beginning. We needed to take care of the ball. We had to make it happen right from the beginning and I think we did that.”
Senior guard Laura Hennessee’s second straight 24-point performance (15 coming in the first half) led the Lady Mustangs, while senior guards Sarah Miller (six points) and Danell Dow (seven points) as well as junior center Sarah Hoeft (seven point) and senior forward Jenn Olvera (nine points) were too much for the pint-sized Mount Pleasant squad to handle.
“We knew we had to come out and give 100 percent and we did,” said Hennessee, who won her second consecutive first round playoff game. “We’re just taking it one game at a time. We focused all of our practices on this game and now we’re thinking next game. We’re not thinking anything else, just one game at a time until we can get as far as we can get.”
The No. 4 seed Lady Mustangs were running and gunning all night – generating fastbreak buckets with a trap defense that No. 13 Mount Pleasant could not break through on a consistent basis.
“They were small. This was the one time all year we can actually say we were way bigger than anybody else,” Williams said. “We worked hard on our defense all week and we’ve been working on that trap and I think we really forced them into the corners and forced them to throw the ball away.”
Gilroy (17-11 overall) advances to Saturday’s CCS quarterfinal round at Leland High against No. 12 Fremont – which upset No. 5 Oak Grove by one, 45-44. The Lady Mustangs already beat Fremont by double digits in the Mustang Classic early in the season.
“No preferences. You’ve got to beat everybody,” said Williams, before knowing the outcome of the Oak Grove-Fremont game. “We’re going to go into that game playing tough, hard defense and playing for a win.”
The Lady Mustangs were well on their way to a first-round win early last night – turning a three-point first-quarter lead into a 13-point spread going into the locker room.
“Coming out strong really helps to build our confidence. So once we come out strong, we know we can compete with them and we know we’re better than them,” Dow said. “It just helps us out the rest of the game and gives us confidence.”
In the second half, Gilroy did not let Mount Pleasant back in the game – opening on an 8-2 run and never looking back.
“In the second half, we just really took over. We extended the lead out,” Williams said. “Everybody got in and got to play that was physically able to, and actually got a lot of playing time.”
Sophomore guard Shante Mancera (two points) and sophomore forward Michelle DiFiore (two points) – who started for the Lady Mustangs – as well as junior Antionette Okere (four points) all played extended minutes.
It was Miller-time in the second half though, as the senior guard controlled the tempo by penetrating off the dribble and finding her open teammates.
“Sarah Miller had a fantastic night. She passed the ball. She shot the ball. When she missed, she rebounded it and put it back in,” Williams said. “She was driving. She was dishing the ball off. She did all the things that we want to see from her in a basketball game.”
Dow even went long a couple times to break the Mount Pleasant full court press – setting up several uncontested lay-ins.
“We’ve been working on that more and more, and that pass is a play we have designed now,” Dow said. “It seems to work because they’re not expecting it.”
In other Division I CCS Playoff action, Milpitas beat Silver Creek, 61-42; Watsonville defeated Hollister, 49-36; and Salinas topped Andrew Hill, 57-35.
