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Lady ‘Billies fall to Maple Grove 55-37

Fredonia’s Kazlin Beers, right, dribbles past Maple Grove’s Anna Tranum, left, during Thursday’s CCAA Division 1 West girls basketball game in Fredonia. OBSERVER Photo by Ron Szot.

The Lady Red Dragons (6-4, 3-1) hopped off the bus ready to play in Fredonia on Thursday night. Maple Grove’s full court press gave them an early lead against the Lady ‘Billies (6-3, 2-1) and their lock down defense kept Fredonia off the board and allowed them to establish an early lead that they held the whole game on the way to a 55-37, Section VI CCAA Division 1 West girls basketball victory at Fredonia High School.

“We just got in a hole very quick,” stated Fredonia head coach Dan Vona. “I think we only scored three points in the first quarter. It was all in transition… they were in our face, full court press. We got a little rattled in the beginning.”

Maple Grove set the tempo early in Thursday’s game at Fredonia, implementing a full court press. The defensive pressure saw Fredonia cough up two quick turnovers that were immediately cashed in and gave Maple Grove a 4-0 lead.

The scoring slowed for a couple minutes, but both defenses continued to generate turnovers and make it difficult to get open shots. Maple Grove was the only team on the board for the first seven minutes of the game as they tried to find their groove on offense.

“I thought we played well defensively,” stated Maple Grove head coach Bill Price. “We had a great team effort. Vazquez is a handful, Beers plays hard all the time. So they’re a handful and we knew going in that we pretty much had to double team Vazquez all the time. But overall, our defense is what I think kind of won it for us.”

Fredonia finally got on the board in the final minute of the first quarter courtesy of an Anna Buchanan free throw and Nagely Vazquez hit a last second shot to make it 11-3 after one quarter.

In the second quarter, the Lady Red Dragons offense started to heat up. Maple Grove started hitting more shots that were not going in earlier, but as they heated up Fredonia did too. Buchanan contributed five points of Fredonia’s nine in the second quarter to help keep the deficit manageable headed into halftime, 23-12.

The third quarter is when Maple Grove really started to separate themselves from any possibility of a Fredonia comeback in the second half. The Lady Red Dragons hit four shots from downtown in the quarter, with two coming from Riley Caskey. Caskey was the key piece to the Maple Grove offense as she scored a game high 19 points, along with three assists and five steals.

“Caskey… unbelievable player,” stated Coach Vona. “They are the quickest team we played so far and they have good ball movement. Caskey pulled up some great shots.”

Despite the Maple Grove offense pulling away, Fredonia never gave up even after getting down by 21 points, 43-22. Instead of giving up in the fourth quarter, Fredonia had their best offensive quarter of the game and scored 15 points against the lockdown Maple Grove defense. Samantha Tabone had two of her three 3-pointers in the final period and Vazquez hit two shots towards her team high of 10 points.

“We started to reverse the ball better offensively,” Coach Vona stated. “We haven’t had too many teams play us man-to-man. Once we reversed the ball man-to-man we got a lot of good looks, so we’re going to work on that man-to-man motion, moving without the ball, the basic fundamentals of a motion offense. We have the players, we have the ingredients… we’re definitely slowly progressing even after a loss like that.”

Caskey helped Maple Grove finish the quarter strong getting a couple late baskets to get the final score of 55-37, and delivered the Lady ‘Billies their first league loss of the season.

“It’s a fun league,” Coach Price stated about the CCAA Division 1 West. “Anyone can win on any given night and if you don’t bring your ‘A’ game every night you’re going to get beat. That’s what you want in a league. Fredonia beat a very good Chautauqua Lake team so we knew coming in it was going to be a handful.”

The Lady ‘Billies are back in action on Monday when they travel to rival Dunkirk.

Maple Grove will look for its fourth consecutive win on Saturday when they host Franklinville who beat them earlier this season.

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