Document text
Ashland sweeps South By Chris Miller Ashland Daily Tidings The Ashland High girl's basketball team overcame 16 turnovers by riding on the back of senior post Marla Morin's game-high 17 rebounds and a combined 21 points off the long-ball, to sweep South Medford in Southern Oregon Conference play 54-39 Friday night at Mountain Avenue Gym. Morin had only three rebounds at half, but a tenacious effort in the third and fourth quarters, she ripped down 14 more boards to help the Grizzlies stay alone in second-place in the SOC at 8-2. "I think that we weren't boxing out as much as we should have been in the first half," Morin said. "But we didn't want to lose the game, we knew how important it was to win." Ashland's senior post Chloe Hansen looks to pass around South Medford's senior guard Natasha Wright during the second half of the Grizzlies SOC win Friday night at Mountain Avenue gym. Ashland Daily Tidings/CHRIS MILLER The Grizz public address announcer introduced Morin as "scoring Marla Morin," but he may have wanted to call her "Soarin' Morin". "It seemed like on every rebound, there was number 34," Grizz head coach Steve Humann said. "When the captain of your team's doing that, then everybody else picks up the pace." Three youngsters - sophomores Hilary Huyett (1) and Alysse Carlson (4), and freshman Jamie Roupp (2) combined for seven 3-pointers to give the Grizz a 21-0 scoring advantage from behind the arc. Huyett picked a great time to hit her lone 3, right as the third-quarter buzzer sounded to put the home team up by seven at 37-30. When the ball hit the bottom of the net, Huyett sent a sly little smile toward the Grizz bench and left her shooting arm up a little longer to stamp an exclamation mark on the shot. "From here on out, we have to win all of our games to be where we want to be for the playoffs," Huyett said. "That shot at the end of the third by Hilary was big," Humann said. "That gave us some breathing room." Ashland trailed only twice in the first quarter and never relinquished the lead for the remainder of the game. South did rally to tie the game at 30-all when the Panthers' senior point guard Natasha Wright hit two of her game-high 16 points with 2:20 left in the first half. But with 1:23 left in the contest and the Grizz up 50-37, South's head coach Andrea Jaime emptied her bench in surrender. With 48.9 left, Humann followed in suit, while chants of "it's all over" rang loudly from the home bleachers. Both teams committed a rash of turnovers, including nine in the first quarter and 33 for the game. Humann said his team's style will lead to some miscues, but he admitted they made too many. "Our goal was to get under 10 and we didn't do that," Humann said. "Our best game is when we're out running and your going to turn the ball over a little, but there were some that were inexcusable. It was not good basketball." Morin said the stream of turnovers must be plugged for the Grizz to go far into the playoffs. "The turnovers are something we really need to work on," she said. "The whole SOC turns the ball over, but we can't do that in the state playoffs." After large-margin wins over Klamath Union and Eagle Point, Humann said Friday's game was a good tune-up for the much-anticipated rematch with league-leading Roseburg Tuesday in Roseburg. "We're improving, that's something about us is that we've improved all year," he said. "We haven't had a bad practice. Our man-to-man defense in extremely good and we keep improving on that game by game." LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -