Brittenham scores 28 as Lake girls beat Rossford to earn sectional title

TOLEDO — In basketball, there are games when one shot makes a difference and there are games when one
player makes a difference.
Saturday night at Bowsher High School, Kaysie Brittenham showed everybody how much of a difference one
player makes in a game.
Brittenham, who finished with a game-high 28 points, carved through Rossford’s defense time and time
again as Lake posted a 46-35 victory, giving the Flyers (20-1) their third consecutive Division III
sectional championship.
“She just took over,” Lake head coach Denny Meyer said. “She attacked the basket like she needed to and
then … I thought some of her bigger plays were at the defensive end just flying in for rebounds. We
were having a hard time rebounding with other people and Kaysie was just coming out nowhere just to go
after the ball and we need that from her and she knows that.”
Brittenham grabbed a team-high six rebounds and was 7-of-8 from the free-throw line.
Rossford, who finishes the season 9-13, looked as if it was going to be blown away early when Lake built
a 14-4 first quarter lead.
But the Bulldogs didn’t give up and held the Flyers to just five points in the second quarter, and
trailed 19-12 at the break.
“We knew the kinds of things they wanted to run,” Rossford head coach Kevin Mitchell said. “We picked up
our intensity in the second quarter but in order to beat Lake you’ve got to be up for 32 minutes, you
can’t do it for just one quarter.”
Though Rossford cut Lake’s 12-point lead to single digits multiple times, it still wasn’t able to
seriously challenge for the lead.
“We had away too many turnovers,” Mitchell said. “I didn’t think we handled the ball very well. But I
think (Lake) had a lot to do with that. We knew they were going to press us this time around and we just
didn’t handle that very well.”
Lake’s press was responsible for forcing 24 turnovers and holding Rossford to just 15-of-40 (38 percent)
shooting.
Even as the Flyers’ pressure was a lot to handle, the Bulldogs were able to, at times, get some easy
layups and transition baskets, which was mainly how Rossford cut into Lake’s leads.
“I feel like we just kind of took a couple breaks on defense and stuff, a couple hustle plays where we
didn’t get back on defense quick enough,” Brittenham said. “We just didn’t quite focus the entire 32
minutes and that’s why we couldn’t really pull away from that 10-point lead.”
In addition to forcing turnovers and defending shots, Lake’s defense held each Rossford player to
single-digits, with Julie Hotz, Tara Kanary, and Alaina Mitchell all scoring eight points.
“All season long we’ve been a very balanced team,” coach Mitchell said. “To beat (Lake) you’ve got to
have probably three kids in double figures.”
The Bulldogs’ defense forced Lake into 14 turnovers and held the Flyers to 40 percent (16-40) shooting
from the field.
“They just make you play ugly,” Meyer said. “They’re low scoring, they work hard, they play probably
harder than any team that you’re going to go against and they just make it an ugly game.”
Second-ranked Lake will face Elmwood (6-16) on Thursday at Anthony Wayne High School, and in order for
the Flyers to keep their tournament run going, they need to stick to their gameplan and stay focused
according to Brittenham.
LAKE 46, ROSSFORD 35
ROSSFORD
Hotz, 3-2—8; Morris, 0-0—0; Jackson, 1-0—2; Kanary, 4-0—8; A. Geraghty, 2-3—7; K. Geraghty, 1-0—2;
Mitchell, 4-0—8. TOTALS: 15-5—35.
LAKE
Brittenham, 9-1-7—28; Woodruff, 0-0—0; Johnson, 2-0—4; Cox, 0-1—1; Pennington, 0-0—0; Huston, 1-4—6;
Shaffer, 3-1—7. TOTALS: 15-1-13—46.
ROSSFORD 4 8 10 13 —35
LAKE 14 5 13 14 —46