Lady Colonials hold off Fillies
Loui Hall scored 35 points and grabbed 21 rebounds as Albert Gallatin held off Laurel Highlands for a 59-57 win Wednesday night that lifted the Lady Colonials into a commanding position in Section 4-AAAA. And, yes, there was a direct correlation to Hall’s scoring and rebounding. The 6-0 senior owned the glass and most of her rebounds led to put-back lay-ups.
Yet, the Fillies managed to stay with AG for most of the game. Laurel Highlands (10-4, 5-2) fell behind in the first half and spent the second half playing catch-up. The Lady Colonials, who improved to 12-2 overall and a commanding 7-0 in section games, led 22-18 at halftime, but threatened to blow the Fillies off their own floor with a 10-point run to open the third quarter.
But the Fillies scratched and clawed their way back into the game and closed to within seven, 40-33, after three quarters. A Lauren Mahoney three-pointer cut AG’s lead to 43-39, but a pair of Hall free throws made it 46-39 with 5:05 remaining.
At 4:48, there was a collision in the Fillies frontcourt that resulted in Hall falling on top of LH’s Deena Blanc, who was carried off the floor and did not return with what coach Rick Hauger described as an injury near the left knee. No further updates were available at press time.
“The thing that sticks in my mind is when their leader went down, they rallied around her,” Hauger said of his team. “They are down right now. Sometimes you fall a little bit short, but they didn’t fall short where it counts, in my opinion.”
Indeed, the Fillies battled the rest of the game as hard as they could, which was plenty hard for Lady Colonials coach Shea Fleanor and his team. In fact, the Fillies played the Lady Colonials tough the whole game.
“I knew coming in that it was going to be a heck of a dog fight,” Fleanor said. “We knew we’d have to work hard. Rick does as good a job as any coach, boys or girls, of getting his players ready to play and that really showed tonight.”
After the collision, the teams went down to the wire punching and counter-punching like prizefighters, but AG managed to maintain its lead right to the end, when LH’s Abby Martin nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer to make it a two-point final.
It was somewhat ironic that the game ended with a made Fillies three-pointer because LH struggled from the field through the first half and made only 13 field goals, including eight three-pointers, for the game.
“Our shooting was absolutely uncharacteristic in the first half,” Hauger said. “We had plenty of opportunities and they had opportunities. Both teams capitalized on some of them and missed on some others, but the bottom line is they scored two more points than we did.”
Martin led the Fillies with 16 points, while Mahoney added 14 (all in the second half) and Hallie Cupp finished with 13. Blanc scored nine on a field goal and hitting all seven free throws.
“I told our girls they have to outwork Laurel Highlands,” Fleanor said. “I’m not sure we did that, but we got close. I can’t say enough about this Laurel Highlands team and that is a testament to what we accomplished.”
Hauger was pleased with his team’s effort in trying to contain Hall, the Duquesne recruit who has scored over 2,000 career points.
“She scored most of her points on lay-ups,” Hauger said. “We couldn’t stop that, but our kids did as well as they could do. We don’t have anybody taller than 5-9, so it was an uphill battle all night.”
The Fillies almost got to the top, but the Lady Colonials kept their perch atop the section.