Dec 16, 2016 By Mike Dudurich for The 3 min read

LATROBE — It was something of a long bus ride from Greater Latrobe High School back home Thursday night for the Connellsville High School girls basketball team.

The Falcons traveled to eastern Westmoreland County for a non-section game, knowing they possessed a size advantage and planned to take advantage of that to get their third win of the season.

Except they didn’t.

With three players over six-feet tall (6-4 Molly Bauer, 6-3 Sara Aumer and 6-0 Abbey Davis), the Falcons went to work on dominating inside … until fouls started piling up.

“When the bigs got in foul trouble, that changed the game for us,” said Connellsville coach Jamie McPoyle. “We just had too much foul trouble.”

As a result, the Falcons absorbed a 64-43 setback and fell to 2-2 for the season.

Greater Latrobe coach Mark Burkhart could see what McPoyle’s intentions were and changed his defensive setup.

“We got into our 2-3 zone and on back-to-back trips down the floor they dumped it inside and scored,” Burkhart said.

“That’s why we went to our pressure. We wanted to force them and not allow them to set up inside much.”

The Falcons got off to what might have been the worst start they could have hoped for, missing shot after shot and not getting on the board until Megan Haggerty scored on a layup nearly four minutes into the first quarter.

By that time, they were down, 9-2.

To the Falcons’ credit, they didn’t quit. They came back to cut the GL lead to three a couple times during the second quarter, but could get not closer than six in the second half as the home team took complete control.

Connellsville was led by Molly Bauer’s 16 points, the only Falcon in double figures.

“The game was sloppy and we missed an awful lot of good looks,” McPoyle said. “We were just inconsistent on offense. It was just a tough night, but that’s a pretty good team we played. They have a terrific offense and we knew that coming in.

“I thought we did a good job on (Laura) Graytok tonight. I don’t know if anybody will hold her to 19 like we did.”

Graytok scored a school-record 40 points in her last game and, despite not feeling up to par physically, rebounded from four-point first half to score 15 in the second half to finish with 19.

“She’s an outstanding player and does a lot of things well,” McPoyle said. “But like I said, they’re a good team, they work hard and they dictate the game with how they play.”

Things don’t get any easier for the Falcons. They’ll host another Section 1 power, Hempfield, Saturday at 12:30 p.m.