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Seven Rivers Ousts Hernando Christian, 47-39

1A-6 GIRLS BASKETBALL

Photo by JOE DiCRISTOFALO

HCA's Remi Manuel

By C.J. RISAK

Hernando Today correspondent

Published: February 6, 2009

OCALA - Hernando Christian Academy had a good season going, and that with a team that had graduated four starters from the season before.
But the Lions needed one more district win to advance to the Class 1A regional playoffs next week.
Their opportunity arrived Friday night against a Lecanto-Seven Rivers Christian team they had already beaten twice this season.
Alas, that single victory proved elusive.
Seven Rivers Christian, which had lost by five and 14 points to HCA, scrapped its way to a one-point halftime lead, then put together a 16-7 blitz in the third quarter -- which gave the Warriors too big a cushion for the misfiring Lions to overcome.
Seven Rivers' 47-39 victory in this 1A-6 district semifinal put it into Saturday night's final opposite top-seed and host team Meadowbrook Academy.
Meadowbrook advanced thanks to a 57-13 nod over Ocala-St. John Lutheran in Friday night's other semifinal.
"We just didn't put the ball in the hole," summed up HCA's first-year Head Coach Trey Crawford. "You've got to score to win..
"We got careless with the ball and had turnovers we shouldn't have made. If we don't get out and score in transition we're not going to score a lot. And to be honest, they hit some shots they normally don't hit."

Turnaround game

Despite the Lions two wins earlier this season, Crawford never expected this game to be anything but a struggle. Which is just what they got.
The game was knotted at 6-all after one quarter, and Seven Rivers had an 18-17 halftime lead. Most of it was built on a mixture of man and zone defenses, with a good deal of pressure that forced countless turnovers by the young Brooksville team.
The effectiveness of that defense was particularly noticeable in the third quarter. When the Warriors' Alex Iwaniec banked in a shot with 4:34 left in the third, HCA fell behind 29-20 -- an 11-3 Seven Rivers run. It also was 30 seconds since the Lions had scored a field goal, and it would be another 6½ minutes before Madeline Hanshaw would break that streak, getting a basket with 6:05 left in the game.
"We did play good defense," said Seven Rivers coach Patrick Kiernan. "We mixed up our man and our zone defenses, and forced them to do things they're not comfortable with. We limited them to one shot and kept them off the boards."
But Kiernan wasn't ready to take too much credit for the win. "They were off tonight," he said of HCA. "This was not the normal Hernando Christian team we see."
Still, Crawford might have said something similar of Seven Rivers. Even when the Lions seemed to be putting a run together, the Warriors would answer. Two free throws in the first 25 seconds of the fourth quarter trimmed the deficit to 34-26, and after a pair of Seven Rivers' foul shots, Hanshaw's basket made it an eight-point game. But the Warriors' Andrea Zachar, just an eighth-grader, scored a pair of baskets sandwiched around a Courtney Crawford bucket, always pushing Seven Rivers' lead back to double digits.
"Their man defense gave us fits tonight," admitted Crawford.
So did Maddie Burich, one of only two seniors on Seven Rivers, with 14 points. Zachar contributed eight.
Remi Manuel paced HCA with 11 points. Crawford added 10.
Hernando Christian concludes its season at 15-7 while Seven Rivers improves to 15-12.