Basketball

Pressure cooked

Burke’s defensive heat causes Sullivan West melt down in first fray of Division IV rivals

By RICHARD A. ROSS

LAKE HUNTINGTON, NY - The weather was frosty last January when a sizzling Sullivan West Lady Bulldogs team went into the frigid atmosphere of John S. Burke’s gym and pulled off a historic win. In February, with the Division IV title on the line, they did it again at home.

With the spring-like temperatures on January 5, the polarity was reversed as the two archrivals resumed the war. This time out, it was Burke that had the fires raging and its defensive heat wrought by an effective two-one-two press stir fried, parboiled and evaporated Sullivan West’s offense from the second quarter on.

Both teams came in with 3-0 league records and their set-to was for the division lead.

Following a good start by the Lady Bulldogs that got them out to an 11-8 lead by the end of the first quarter, Burke upped its defensive intensity. Settling in, the Lady Eagles pressured the ball, and forced an uncanny 10 turnovers in the second quarter. They ripped off 16 straight points, outscoring the Lady Dawgs 18-2.

Burke’s resolve to take back division title ownership, which it owned for 11 straight years and surrendered last January to Sullivan West, was affirmed by Lady Eagle standout Emily Stallings.

Asked after her team’s convincing 40-23 win if last year’s losses to Sullivan West were on the team’s mind, she said, “It was very motivating. We thought we got robbed here last year, so we really wanted to beat them. This year, I thought the refs were a lot better,” she said, implying that Burke felt it didn’t get the calls it should have gotten last year.

Fueled by an enthusiastic home crowd, a strong will and Burke’s somewhat lethargic play, the battle began. With a strong move to the basket by Rachel Houghtaling and a quick two points from Sarah Lander off an inbounds pass from Donna Kelly, Sullivan West strove to send a message that their prior year’s dominance would continue.

But it would take a lot more than that to get Burke rattled. Steeled by AAU play and experience playing against tough competition, Burke, led by its extremely successful coach Bob Turner, who recently recorded his 300th win, kept its composure and tied the game with shots by sophomore Megan Rufer and junior Katie Grahn.

A put back by Sarah Lander of a Houghtaling miss was answered by a basket from Chelsea Gallagher. The first of two three-pointers by Lander and a catch-and-shoot by Houghtaling afforded Sullivan West a five-point lead. Burke closed out the quarter with a basket as Rufer was not boxed out and easily put back a miss by Grahn.

While both teams had turned the ball over only three times in the first frame, the turnover ratio jumped to 10-1 in the second quarter as the Lady Eagles bared their talons, effected steals and precipitated traveling violations on the suddenly hapless Lady Bulldogs, who mustered a pair of free throws from Lander for the entire quarter. For the latter 6:04 of the second frame, Burke asserted itself at both ends of the floor. Offensively, Burke got better rotation and effectively posted up Rufer down low. That freed up others to get good looks at the basket, including Shannon Gough whose constant movement without the ball gave her great sight lines to the cylinder. She scored six in the frame as did Gallagher. Stallings, who inbounded the ball on most possessions, ran as the trailer, and scored four.

Burke led 26-13 at the half, and got into the heads of a fragile Sullivan West team that has been hampered by injuries. Erin Bernhardt is not quite all the way back from her second knee surgery and Lander, who suffered a high ankle sprain a couple of weeks ago in practice, is clearly still struggling.

“They need her [Lander] to do a lot of things and it was clear she’s still not 100 percent,” Turner said. Burke’s strategy was to deny the screen-and-roll that Sullivan West normally runs from the baseline, and force them to run a pick-and-roll, which Burke has assiduously practiced to defend.

It worked like a charm. Without Lander’s ability to move quickly, coupled with the loss of someone to post up inside, like April Ackermann did last year, the Lady Bulldogs had to yield dominance in the paint to Rufer or Stallings, while their other shooters found open spaces to bury shots. Without a deft inside/outside shooter like graduate Kate Fanning, Sullivan West’s arsenal is diminished and its younger players, who are still very much a work in progress, haven’t yet assumed the mindset of attacking Burke, drawing fouls and making the Lady Eagles work at both ends of the floor.

Sullivan West added four points in the third quarter, while Burke got 11, leading to a 37-17 lead after three. Frustration began to show in more physical play as several players hit the floor and foul totals began to rise.

Grahn and Gallagher accounted for 10 of Burke’s 11 points in the frame, while Sullivan West was limited to Lander’s second three and a free throw by Jenn Pitz. Five more turnovers in the third and three in the fourth gave the Lady Bulldogs 21 on the night to Burke’s 10. Sullivan West (6-3, 3-1 OCIAA) only got to the line seven times. They converted five of those opportunities. Burke (6-0, 4-0 OCIAA) converted two-of-three from the stripe. Gallagher led all scorers with 12 points. Lander and Houghtaling each contributed 10 for Sullivan West.

Following the loss, a muted Bernhardt put the game in perspective. “We played a good 10 minutes before everything broke down with a lot of turnovers and people not going to their spots,” he said. “They closed out a lot better than we did. Our kids aren’t used to shooting with a hand in their faces. They have two people they can post up and I don’t have anyone I can put on the block to make them double us.” More importantly, Bernhardt said, “We took ourselves out of the game with our minds.”

“This is an evaluative game. They’ve got to beat us twice to get the division title back,” he said, and added that the state of his team at this juncture is far behind what it’s been in prior years. “We’ve had seasons where we were peaking at this time and we’re far behind now.” Bernhardt attributed that to injuries and the team’s youth.

Before the two teams meet again on February 13 in Goshen, Burke will sharpen its talons against a brutally tough schedule, including Cornwall, Albertus Magnus, Kingston, Haldane and Millbrook.

Turner looks forward to the upcoming challenge against Kingston. “They’ll stay in their press and are perimeter oriented, so we have to execute our press offense and make it a half-court game,” he said.

Sullivan West will test its skills against Cornwall next week, but the remainder of its competition is not nearly as taxing. Bernhardt hopes his team can give Cornwall a run. As for the rest of the season, he said, “We still have six more weeks to go and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”