by Rudy Brandl, Sports Editor
ROSELLE PARK The Manville High girls broke out an offensive slump with their finest quarter of basketball Monday afternoon at Roselle Park.
After failing to reach 20 points in last week’s lopsided losses to Bernards and Hackettstown, the Lady Mustangs put up 18 in the fourth quarter of Monday’s 48-32 loss. They trailed by as many as 24 points but opened the final quarter on a 14-0 tear to make things interesting down the stretch.
”We got a confidence boost, and that’s really what it took,” said second-year MHS head coach Larisa Donis-Jeppson, who returned to the bench for the first time this season after missing the first five games. “They pushed it up the floor and picked it up. A lot of it has to do with confidence.”
Roselle Park began to empty its bench in the fourth quarter but quickly brought back the starters after Manville scored 14 straight points in a span of just over five minutes. Donis-Jeppson noticed her girls continued to play with the same swagger against Roselle Park’s top players, the same group that produced a 20-4 lead in the first quarter.
Junior forward Amy Evanylo ignited the surge by scoring all 15 of her points in the second half. Evanylo netted eight in the 14-0 flurry and scored four more in the final two minutes when the home team woke up and put the game away. Evanylo also blocked two shots in the fourth quarter.
The Lady Mustangs were fun to watch in the final eight minutes. Evanylo started the fourth quarter with a putback of her own miss and added the free throw to complete a 3-point play. Evanylo hit another free throw before Dana Mortensen, who made all six of her foul shots to finish with six points, made four in a row. Christine Pohl made a steal and converted a transition hoop, and Evanylo hit two layups to make it 38-28 with 2:52 to play. Mortensen dished off a beautiful assist to Evanylo for the final points of the 14-0 spurt.
”It was a lot of fun,” said Evanylo, who also pulled down a team-high eight rebounds. “It gets you really pumped up, and you don’t want to stop.”
Monday’s game marked the second time this season where the Manville girls outscored their opponents in the final three quarters of a loss. Bad starts have haunted this team.
”They (Roselle Park) were playing great defense and we weren’t making the adjustments,” Donis-Jeppson said. “We weren’t getting our wings open to get the offense working.”
Later in the game, the MHS girls started to move the ball around. With a little more precision from the perimeter, the visitors could have made this contest even closer.
”We just started picking it up,” Evanylo said. “We always seem to play an individual quarter. If we play like we did in the fourth quarter, we’ll be so much better.”
Manville was missing two starters in Monday’s game. Sophomore Kate Pornovets, the team’s scoring leader early in the season, sat out with a thumb injury. Anna Isachenko had a scholastic commitment. Pohl and Erin Lipot stepped in and joined Evanylo, Mortensen and Kim Jones (4 points) in the starting lineup.
The Lady Mustangs were scheduled to face Bound Brook and Somerville this week and expected two completely different games. Bound Brook and Manville typically go down to the wire, while Somerville is one of the stronger teams on the schedule.

