Girls basketball
By: Jim Green
The Lawrence High School girls basketball team just needed a win. It didn’t matter how it came.
So, even though they had to go to overtime after blowing a lead in the final seconds of regulation, the Cardinals were more than happy to leave the LHS gym Tuesday night with a 39-38 win over Allentown.
Senior forward Jeralyn Krawczyk, who hit a clutch 3-pointer to give Lawrence a 2-point lead in the final minute of regulation and connected on the game-winning in free throw in overtime, led the Cardinals with 10 points and four rebounds. Senior forward Theresa Gregory added nine points including four in overtime and four rebounds.
The Cardinals, who snapped a three-game losing streak, moved to 3-5 overall and pulled even at 2-2 in the Colonial Valley Conference.
"I thought we stayed real composed," Lawrence coach Gregg Zenerovitz said. "In regulation, and even in overtime, I don’t think we got flustered at all."
Senior forward Arianna Brame (8.2 points per game) missed her second straight game due to illness. Without their second-leading scorer, the Cardinals struggled to put points on the board all night and fell behind 32-29 with less than five minutes left in the fourth quarter.
Sophomore guard Nicole McMullen connected on a baseline jumper, pulling Lawrence within one point with four minutes to play. The school’s smoke alarms then went off, forcing a 15-minute delay in the action.
Both squads struggled to regain their rhythm when they returned to the court, exchanging missed shots and turnovers until Krawczyk knocked down a clutch 3-pointer from the left arc to give Lawrence a 34-32 lead with 20 seconds left.
"Jeralyn (Krawczyk) was open," Zenerovitz said. "She knows, when she has an open look, to shoot. That’s a good shot. It’s a gutsy shot to take."
However, the Cardinals, who lost to Bordentown on a last-second put-back earlier this season, again failed to box out in a critical situation, as the Redbirds’ Barbara Jones scored off an offensive rebound with nine seconds left to send the game to overtime.
"We (the Lawrence coaches) told the girls not to be satisfied, because we need to box out better," Zenerovitz said. "We got lucky in the end. If we boxed out better I don’t think she (Jones, who finished with a game-high 14 points) would have been that big a factor. We have to work on boxing out."
In overtime, the Cardinals focused on getting the ball inside to their leading scorer, Gregory (15.9 points per game). The plan paid off, as Gregory scored four consecutive points to bring Lawrence back from a four-point deficit with less than two minutes left.
"In overtime, we worked it into Theresa (Gregory)," Zenerovitz said. "That was the plan. The fire alarm helped us. It gave us time to design things for Theresa."
Krawczyk completed the comeback win by converting the front end of a 1-and-1 from the free-throw line with 27 seconds left.
"I think the key was that we didn’t force the ball into Theresa (Gregory) in regulation," Zenerovitz said. "We had a lot of open looks."
The Cardinals were coming off a disappointing 51-31 loss Friday at West Windsor-Plainsboro North. Gregory paced the Cardinals with 14 points against the Knights.
On Jan. 6, Lawrence dropped a 61-51 decision to Hamilton at LHS. Gregory poured in 23 points, and Brame added 11 in the hard-fought defeat.
"We played tough in the losses to Bordentown and Hamilton," Zenerovitz said. "The loss to West Windsor North was disturbing because we didn’t play tough. I thought we lost focus mentally."
Zenerovitz was pleased that the loss to West Windsor-Plainsboro North had no carryover effect.
"We forgot about what happened in that game," he said. "It’s good we came back from it."