Brittenham’s 36 points lead Lake girls past Eastwood (2-11-11)

The Lake faithful had a bit of a scare Friday night at Owens Community College.
At least for the first eight minutes.
After being out-scored 13-11 by Eastwood in the first quarter, the Flyers and Kaysie Brittenham fell into
a groove and went on to dominate the final 24 minutes of the contest, coming away with a 58-37 Suburban
Lakes League win.
The victory gave fourth-ranked Lake (18-0, 11-0) at least a share of its third consecutive SLL title.
Eastwood remained tied for last in the league, 2-16 overall and 1-10 in the SLL.
After playing a sloppy first quarter, in which Lake continued missing its easy shots underneath the
basket, Brittenham took over during the second and third quarters.
She, too, missed multiple shots from inside, but put those misses aside and went on to score a game-high
36 points for the Flyers, setting Lake’s girls’ single-game scoring record. The previous mark was 34
points.
“I think at the beginning of the game, I just rushed shots a little bit too much and didn’t focus as much
as I needed to, but as the game went on I settled down and everybody started playing better together and
started making things happen,” Brittenham said.
Despite being out-scored 14-3 in the second quarter, the Eagles remained in striking distance of Lake,
trailing by only 25-16 at the break.
But Eastwood opened the third quarter with two consecutive turnovers that led to four points for
Brittenham. That was just the start of Brittenham’s 18-point quarter, which included three baskets from
beyond the 3-point line.
Although the Eagles stayed close to Lake in the first 16 minutes of the game with their man-to-man
defense, they switched to a zone defense in the second half hoping to make the Flyers work for their
shots, according to Eastwood head coach Shaun Briggs.
“We switched to zone basically because they were starting to read our defense a little bit,” Briggs said.
“We wanted to give them a little bit different of a look. Also, we were trying to clog the middle up so
Brittenham and (Hannah) Cox couldn’t dribble-drive through us.”
But Lake responded to the all too familiar zone defense that it sees almost on a nightly basis.
After shooting just 9-of-23 (39 percent) in the first half the Flyers improved drastically resulting in
shooting 21-of-41 (51 percent) from the field for the game.
“Our man offenses get us good looks, we just weren’t making them (in the first half),” Lake head coach
Denny Meyer said. “I think for the most part we shoot with confidence. I think for the most part we’re
very unselfish and we get people good shots. We don’t force a whole lot of our shots because everybody’s
unselfish and we move the ball well, so we always have confidence with shooting.”
Brittenham agreed with her coach that the Flyers are playing and shooting with confidence.
“I think it gives us confidence to know that we can be even better than what we’re playing and that it’s
just the little shots that are keeping us from being that much better,” she said.
Eastwood’s Courtney Rolf, who had 20 points and 16 rebounds Tuesday against Gibsonburg, was limited to
just four points by Flyer post Carly Huston.
“There’s games we’d like to see her score more but she’s spending a lot of energy playing defense,” Meyer
said. “She’s shut down most posts this year.”
Huston added to her defense by tallying nine points.
Diana Bushman led Eastwood with 10 points.
Eastwood won the junior varsity game 24-14. Emily Hayward paced the Eagles with six points.
LAKE 58, EASTWOOD 37
EASTWOOD
Helm, 1-1—3; Renollet, 2-0—4; Frobose, 0-0—0; Bushman, 4-2—10; Rolf, 2-0—4; Heestand, 2-1-1—8; Snyder,
2-0—4; K. Weaver, 0-0—0; P. Weaver, 2-0—4. TOTALS: 15-1-4—37.
LAKE
Brittenham, 10-4-4—36; Duncan, 0-0—0; Woodruff, 0-0—0; Dabney, 0-0—0; Johnson, 0-0—0; Cox, 1-1-2—7;
Huston, 3-3—9; Cowell, 0-0—0; Shaffer, 1-2—4; LaPlante, 0-0—0; Lee, 1-0—2. TOTALS: 16-5-11—58.
EASTWOOD 13 3 6 15 —37
LAKE 11 14 23 10 —58
Junior varsity: Eastwood, 24-14.