LaSalle Academy girls basketball pulls away in second half to beat Bishop Guertin (video)

NASHUA - Sean Reddy doesn't usually have the LaSalle Academy girls basketball team playing a lot of zone defense.

But if something is working, might as well stick with it, and the zone was working just fine Saturday for the Rams.

The defense helped LaSalle open the second half on a 19-2 run to turn a one-point game into a 54-40 win over Bishop Guertin in a matchup of defending Division I champions from Rhode Island and New Hampshire, respectively.

Jayme DeCesare led all scorers with 14 points for the Rams (2-0) and Lauren Ferreira added 12 points while Christina Kiser and Ella Fiore were also in double figures with 10 apiece.

"I love the intensity," Reddy said. "We don’t get that kind of matchup in Rhode Island often enough. I thought the girls matched Bishop Guertin’s intensity, which is fantastic for both teams.

"We just added our zone defense this week in practice. We said let’s try it. This is the most zone we’ve played in a long time, but it was so successful (Saturday) that we used it more than normal. It’s a very active zone. The key to the zone is you’ve got make outside shots and their kids struggled to make them."

It took a few possessions for Bishop Guertin (1-1) to settle down against the zone, and the Cardinals were able to get looks, but had a hard time getting shots to fall.

Bri Wilcox led Bishop Guertin with 13 points, but no one else was in double figures. Erin Carney had nine points and Eliza Field had eight, as the Cardinals were without Caroline Hoffer, Addison Smith and Aaliyah Forman.

"They mixed it up pretty well and caused us a little trouble," Bishop Guertin coach Brad Kreick said. "We didn’t shoot the ball great, but that’s part of the game. We’ve got to figure out where to score. We don’t see a ton of zone and they were pretty active in it. I thought we got decent shots and at times, we were reasonably patient with it.

"What really hurt us was that we’d miss, which is fine, but they’d beat us back down the floor and score. They had to have scored five or six baskets in transition, which is not typical of us."

LaSalle got off to a fast start, forcing Bishop Guertin into six turnovers on its first seven possessions to take a 6-2 lead early. The Rams went up 10-5 when the Cardinals got going.

A putback by Field was followed by a 3-pointer from Carney to tie the game and start Bishop Guertin on a 12-0 run to end the quarter. The Cardinals led 17-10 at the end of the quarter, and were up 21-15 with 3:46 left in the half, when the Rams responded with a 7-0 run to lead 22-21 at the break.

Bishop Guertin struggled with turnovers to start the second half and LaSalle took advantage, scoring eight straight points to go up by nine and eventually led 41-23. The Cardinals were able to get back within eight points thanks to a 12-2 run, but Bishop Guertin was forced to foul in the final minutes and the Rams put the game away by going 9 of 13 from the line.

"They played hard. We’re young and I think you could see that (Saturday)," Kreick said. "We’ve got talent, but we’ve got a long way to go, and we just got beat by a better team. No excuses, we got outcoached, we got outplayed, and this is a great learning lesson for us early in the season."