COVINGTON – Ansonia, the 6th seed in the OHSAA DVI Girls Basketball Tournament, defeated #3 Legacy Christian 48-35. The Knights came into the game with an 18-5 record and Champions of the Metro Buckeye Conference.
The Tigers leaned on their defense, holding Legacy to two points and scoreless for 6 minutes of the 2nd quarter, and finished strong, going a combined 17-for-20 from the free throw line to pull off the mild upset.
It was a tight game for both teams to start as they traded baskets and leads. Charlotte Barga hit two triples, and Olivia Creager had four points for the Tigers, but Legacy held a slim 11-10 lead at the end of the first period.
Ansonia got the lead 12-11 to start the second quarter on a baseline jumper from Autumn Best. The Knights responded at 6:36 to go up 13-12, but they wouldn’t score the remainder of the first half.
The Tigers went on a 12-0 run in that span by sharing the basketball with five players scoring. Best added another bucket, Lydia Hahn had an old-fashion 3-point play, Rose Barga a corner triple that had the Tiger crowd standing and cheering as Ansonia took a 24-13 lead at the break.
Legacy Christian, known for being a physical team and able to apply pressure, forcing turnovers, turned up in 3rd quarter. They came out and banged a triple to start and then forced a few turnovers to cut the margin to 24-18.
After spending most of the first half on the bench due to foul trouble London Reichert finished a left-handed hook for two and converted a 3-point play on the foul. Hahn followed up with a lay-up to push the lead back out to 29-18 at the five-minute mark.
Holding a 35-25 lead, Legacy’s Grace Breeding connected on a trey to help the Knights win the quarter 15-11, cutting the margin to 35-28 heading into the final stanza.
Legacy cut it to five, but fouled Reichert, who made two free throws to stop the surge going up 37-30 at 6:38. Three more free throws, one from Hahn and two from Creager, made it 40-31. Creager’s elbow jumper a few minutes later pushed it to 42-31at 3:21.
That’s when the Tigers spread the floor pulling the ball out making Legacy gamble for a possible lay-up, or foul Ansonia sending them to the free throw line.
”Once you get up double digits, you want to make sure as a team you’re getting layups or nothing. We told our girls to spread out our base offense against their 1-3-1, pull it up higher so we can make the easier pass, and if you got a driving lane or a back door cut for an easy layup, take it. If not, take care of the basketball and make them come foul. And we’re shooting free throws the majority of the fourth quarter,” Custenborder stated.
Legacy was unable to break the Tigers whose free-throw arsenal kept the Knights at distance the rest of the way by going 10-for-13 in the quarter and 17-for-20 in the game.
Ansonia went on to win the district semi-final game 48-35 to advance to the District Championship game on Saturday, February 28th at Monroe High School.
They will take on #2 seed West Liberty Salem, who ended Arcanum’s season in a 45-44 thriller. Game time is now set for 11 a.m.
After the game, Custenborder talked about the importance of free throws and how the team has turned it around from being a 50% free-throw shooting team.
“Free throws, the girls hate it, we’ve went from shooting 10 in practice to 20 in practice to 50 in practice. They say it takes too long to shoot 50, but honestly, since we switched our percentages have gone way up. At the start of the year, we were like right around 50% which is not very good for a varsity basketball team, so we’ve had to work on it more, and towards the end of the year started to shoot them a lot better,” Custenborder stated.
Another key to the game was defense as the Tigers held a team scoring 54 points a game to just 35.
“Our girls do a great job of prepping for other teams. We expect them to know about 10 to 15 of the other team’s sets, and we do different stuff in all 10 to 15. It’s not like just a base defense, and they do a great job of executing that stuff,” Custenborder clarified.
“They have three girls that can just go get a bucket anytime they want, so I’m very happy with our individual defense on them, and team defense for helping out on those drives and rotating on the backside. When you can slow those three down, you’re going to do pretty well,” Custenborder explained.
Rose Barga, a key player, sustained a late-season injury, but rather than dwell on that the Tigers had players step their game up to compensate.
“Our girls have stepped up for Rose. Lydia Hahn and Shyann McKenna have had to handle so much pressure the last couple games where Rose took a lot of that pressure away from them, really for their whole basketball careers. And they’ve done such a good job the last two games against teams that get after you, by taking care of the basketball,” Custenborder praised.
He also recognized the effort of senior Olivia Creager who had 12 points and sophomore Charlotte Barga who had 16 in the game.
“Those two “OC” (Olivia Creager) and Charlotte have stepped up their scoring a lot here as of late. Charlotte’s just been on a mission, she wants it bad, while still taking her outside shots, but she’s getting to the hole so much more now, being a lot more aggressive, and that’s just going to make her game so much better,” Custenborder added.
Ansonia won a district championship back in 1992 and their last appearance in a district final was in 2009.
The Tigers are poised as the team has stepped up their game, and with the fans support and the energy from the reserve players in practice and on the bench to ignite them it might just be the edge they need to help bring home their 2nd ever district championship on Saturday.
Box Score
Score by Quarters
10 … 14 … 11 … 13 – 48 Ansonia (16-9) Record
11 … 02 … 15 … 07 – 35 Legacy Christian (18-6) Record
Team Scoring
ANS – C. Barga 2-1-8/8 – 16, Hahn 0-2-2/3 – 6, Best 0-2-0/0 – 4, R. Barga 1-0-0/0 – 3,
Creager 0-5-2/4 – 12, Reichert 0-1-5/5 – 7, Totals 3-11-17/20 – 48
LC – Allport 1-3-1/1 – 10, Dry 1-0-1/2 – 4, Combs 1-3-3/4 – 12, Breeding 1-3-0/0 – 9,
Totals 4-9-4/7 – 34
