Gaels girls cut down turnovers, march past Saints

December 15, 2000

Gaels girls cut down turnovers, march past Saints

By JACK HILL III / Staff Correspondent

ST. JAMES - The St. Maria Goretti girls basketball team knew that it had to do something about its 30 turnovers per game average.

On Thursday, the Gaels took a step in the right direction.

The better ball control held the Gaels to a season-low 21 miscues, good enough to score a 54-27 win over St. James.

"We have been making a real big effort to cut our number of turnovers in half," said Goretti center Lauren Costello, who finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds. "It has been one of our goals in practice. We wanted to work the ball around and play as a team to get the win."

St. Maria Goretti went on an 11-2 scoring spurt for four minutes in the middle of the first quarter to build a 13-6 lead.

The Gaels outscored the Saints 14-2 during the second quarter to increase their advantage to 27-8 at halftime. Costello, Brett Stone and Kelly Wills combined to score 22 of the Gaels' 27 points during the first half.

"We pretty much controlled the tempo of the game," St. Maria Goretti coach Todd Rideout said. "Our game plan was to try to contain their leading scorer, Jennifer Jenkins. I thought Wills and Chambers did a good job of keeping the pressure on Jenkins."

Stone finished with 16 points, seven rebounds and seven steals while Wills added 11 points on the strength of three 3-pointers to offset the loss of Heidi Siirtola, who strained the MCL in her left knee last week and will be out between four and six weeks.

Jenkins led St. James with 10 points. Kourtney Logan and Rachael Eyler grabbed five rebounds each for the Saints.

"Offensively, we just never got on track," St. James coach Ted Camp said. "We didn't move the ball as well as we are capable of."

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