Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – St. Bernard’s Laila Florvilus moves the ball up court during Saturday night’s game at McKinleyville.
The St. Bernard’s girls improved to 4-1 against Big 5 teams with a 44-35 win at McKinleyville on Saturday night, while also avenging one of their only two losses of the season.
With McKinleyville trying to limit the effectiveness of St. Bernard’s standouts Madelyn Shanahan and Laila Florvilus, the ever-improving SB girls got some huge contributions from elsewhere on their way to the victory.
The win lifts the Crusaders to 14-2, while the Panthers suffered just their fifth loss of the season and dropped to 13-5.
“McKinleyville came out in a triangle and two defense and tried to take away Shanahan and Florvilus,” St. Bernard’s head coach Matt Tomlin said. “It was a great game plan by coach (Jacob) Cheek.”
It didn’t quite work, however, thanks to the performances of Aliyah Vigil, Mataya Sherman and Hannah Finck, among others, as they all stepped up their game and knocked off a Big 5 opponent for the second straight weekend.
“I am so proud of the amazing Lady Crusaders,” Tomlin said. “We are playing great basketball right now.”
Despite the Panthers’ best efforts to thwart the main St. Bernard’s threats, both Shanahan and Florvilus each were instrumental in the win once again.
“McKinleyville did a good job double teaming Shanahan every time she touched the ball,” Tomlin said. “Maddy did a great job passing to open teammates and facilitating our offense.”
Floirvilus scored a game-high 19 points and continues to grow in stature every game.
“Laila Florvilus is playing as good as anybody in the H-DNL right now and she made big plays late in the game again tonight,” her head coach said.
Vigil finished with 10 points in the win, while Sherman had eight points, Shanahan four and Finck three.
Camryn Pinard scored a team-high eight points for the Panthers, who lost for the first time in four games.
Tatum Fisher added seven points, Neyr-Res Bartoo and Taly Turner each had six points and Morgan Stubbs and Kim Lewis both chipped in four.
The Crusaders have now beaten Del Norte, Fortuna, Arcata and McKinleyville, with their only loss against Big 5 teams coming against McKinleyville in mid December.
Saturday’s’ win over another Division-4 team also will help their playoff seeding in the North Coast Section, with the Panthers ranked No. 2 in the division coming into the game, according to MaxPreps, and SB No. 4.
Next up, on Tuesday, the St. Bernard’s girls will host Fortuna, while the Mack girls play at Eureka in the Big 5.
Categories: Basketball, McKinleyville, St. Bernard's
Finally, after many basketball seasons, Tomlin is first coach in a long time to even utter a word about a scheme or style being played in the contest… as if readers or even fans at the game have a clue…
…what Tomlin did was tantamount to educating us on the game, what to learn about and understand.
A triangle and 2 is one of many ways to play the game of basketball, counters to counters, etc.. typically for guarding a stellar combo backcourt …but personally Henchy questions this type of scheme if the defenders cant defend the dribble-drive, are not quick enough for positionings or shorter than counterpart…as the Triangle and 2 is weak against teams adept at skillful passing and cutting…the interior zone3 defense unfortunately allows angular lane gaps which the M2M backcourt players will not defend successfully up top if defender can’t defend drives, has a short stature disadvantage and slower are their metrics…
…that mentioned, nothing more descriptive of how St. B’s was beating the T2.
Personally, if the T2 was being exploited, needed to change it up immediately, maybe a pinched-in 2-1-2 zone, deny high post pass inlets, force guards wide with overloads from back side after pass, inducing cross-court/over-the-top passes if game controlled by 2 guards.
Maybe a shifting 2-3 zone (hard press, soft press) mixed in with a 1-2-2 zone, or even pack-line…
Not there, don’t know the athlete specs, roster comparisons or skillsets, or how the front court interacts with it’s backcourt,… but elated a coach got into the finer points of tactics, schemes, formations, etc… of a sport…even if it was by Title only without more of the hows… double teamed, passed out of double team well…means an offense player was freed-up somewhere… personally, double-teams must be executed perfectly, and only attempted off the inbounds, in corners, under the basket, in a press defense or by atypical surprise… if ya start out double-team-defense up top, against a 2 guard back court, and stick with it much of the contest, ya just made it easy for the opposing offense to counter the defense successfully by passing to the open player expeditiously…
and if the double-team is created by the defense m2m guards pinching together, maybe it is more effective to use the high post/ FTL player in the double team up top, a low post player on the wings, with the interior zone defenders rotating from block to post, post to block, post to post…leaving weakside player for over-the-top pass.
If a defense can stay compact, in-form, maybe attempting a Diamond or Box in 1 might help in flustering an offense into poor outside shooting. Leave an outside shooter free to shoot if post play is sufficient to guard the paint, then adjust accordingly…this is high school, athletes are still learning advancing basics… and often times, shooters just go cold, so putting a shooter on the spot can work defensively when mixed into the options.
Refreshing to read applications of strategy in sports.
✅👍