LH girls lose at Latrobe
It was more of the same for the Laurel Highlands girls basketball team Monday night.
On the road at Latrobe High School, the Fillies fell hopelessly behind in the first half, made some adjustments and actually outscored Latrobe in the second half, but fell to 0-10 in Section 1-AAAA and 0-18 overall with a 58-45 loss.
“Obviously their press really bothered us in the first half,” said Laurel Highlands coach Amy Tungate. “It gave us a lot of problems because they really run it well. And they get after it all the time. We knew they’d be tough. But we cleaned some things up in the second half and handled it a little better.”
While the venue was different, a lot of things happened Monday night that Tungate had no doubt seen many times before in this difficult season. As Latrobe frazzled and smothered Laurel Highlands with that press, the numbers on the scoreboard quickly got away from the visitors.
It was 14-1 with 3:11 to go. It got to 16-1 and 18-1 before Taylor Large scored the team’s only basket of the first quarter. Things got worse before anyone could even think about better. The Wildcats increased the lead to 36-7 with 2:40 left in the half and it wasn’t until 1:25 was left in the first half that the Fillies got to double figures.
Down 40-14 at halftime, the combination of Latrobe backing off a bit and Tungate’s team starting to find a bit of success led to some positives for LH.
“This probably is going to be our team for next year and, with this being our first year in Class AAAA, it’s been a learning experience for us, seeing what’s out there,” Tungate said. “We working hard to keep the kids positive, keep working them to get better. We’ve been stressing skills and fundamentals and when they have a second half like they did tonight, that’s something we can build on.”
Laurel Highlands put up a 31-19 advantage in the second half thanks to their leading scorers, neither of which were in the starting lineup. Emily Hartsek provided a strong presence inside and used that presence to score 10 of her 12 points in the fourth quarter. Kristina Hudock poured in 14, high for the team. Olivia Crutchman was the leading rebounder with five.
“Shooting has been our downfall all year and we struggled again tonight,” Tungate said. “We had some good looks but just didn’t knock them down.”
Tungate’s team hosts Norwin Thursday night.