Sturgis West center Becca Rowe positions for the rebound as Nantucket’s Moneak Phillip (2), Jazzmin Butler (14) amnd Jadelen Harold (35) and West’s Shannon Crawley (5) aim to get in front of her with little luck.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
HYANNIS — The choppy ferry ride from Nantucket to Hyannis was enough to make Captain Ahab seasick.
But not the Nantucket Whalers girls’ basketball team.
Taking off on an early, 8-1 run to open the first quarter yesterday afternoon against the host Sturgis West Navigators, the Whalers never looked back en route to a decisive, 66-27 victory.
The Whalers now stand at 2-3 on the season while the Sturgis West girls fall to an even 3-3.
Nantucket’s Lizzie Thayer led all scorers on the day with 20 points while pulling down seven rebounds to go along with three steals. Fourteen of Thayer’s 20 points and five of her rebounds came in the fourth quarter, although the Whalers’ lead was never in jeopardy. Nantucket led Sturgis West 12-4 after the first quarter, 27-12 at the half and 44-23 after the third stanza.
Sturgis West’s Becca Rowe led the Navigators with 13 of her team’s 27 points and turned in a double-double with 11 rebounds. She also went 7-12 from the free throw line as she handled the inside lane quite well throughout the game in spite of being routinely swarmed every time she touched the ball. Teammate Shannon Crawley finished with a respectable eight points on the day, six points of which came via a pair of downtown treys in her valiant late-game attempt to get the Navigators back in the game.
Nantucket’s Katie Fox netted a well-earned 18 points as she played the outside perimeter to near-perfection, scoring six in the first quarter on outside jump shots and another six points in the second quarter doing the same. She added six rebounds to her effort. All totaled, nine Nantucket players found their way into the scorebook, with Ciara Wilson adding nine points and Jadelen Harold putting down four assists and five rebounds from the low post.
Down 8-0 in the first, the Navigators’ Maggie Farley got the hosts on the board for the first time to make it 8-1 when she went 1-2 from the line.
Nantucket High School’s Jadelen Harold (35) boxes out Sturgis West’s Cat Mahoney in the Whalers’ 66-27 win yesterday afternoon.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
The Whalers got into some early, first quarter foul trouble, but it did not seem to them in any way. Both Thayer and Brianna Cook played with four fouls for an exceptional amount of time, but the tables were turned in the second half as a more aggressive Sturgis West team came out of the halftime intermission.
From the opening tip-off, Nantucket ran a 3-1-1 full court press and that defensive strategy wrecked havoc upon the Navigators, causing the hosts to turn the ball over 10 times in the first quarter and 25 times through the end of the game.
Sturgis West hopes to get back on track tomorrow night (Thursday, Jan. 15) at 6:30 pm when it welcomes Falmouth Academy (7-2) to the Hyannis Youth and Community Center.
Nantucket welcomes Cape Cod Academy today at 5:00 pm.
— Sean Walsh is the sports editor for www.capecod.com. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm.
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