Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 17, 1993 TAG: 9311170131
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: M.J. DOUGHERTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
\ Any questions about the Blacksburg High School girls' basketball team were answered in the first quarter Tuesday night.
The Indians got offense from Mary Thorn and Abigail Murrmann. They got defense from everyone.
And they built a nine-point lead en route to a 59-46 victory over Lee in the first round of the Region IV tournament.
Blacksburg (21-2) will travel to Richlands (19-3), which had a first-round bye, for a regional semifinal. The winner also will earn a berth in the state Group AA tournament.
Lee (12-9) saw its season end at the hands of the Indians for the second consecutive year.
Thorn, Blacksburg's senior point guard, turned question marks into exclamation points when she came out shooting in the opening period.
"I felt that in order to get the team going, I needed to shoot," said Thorn, who finished with a game-high 23 points. "I felt it at the beginning; when I started shooting warm-ups I was feeling pretty good. And they were leaving me open to shoot it, so I took it."
Thorn hit back-to-back 3-pointers that gave the Indians a a 19-12 advantage. Then Murrmann, who scored six points in the period, got loose twice inside in the final minute, making the score 25-16.
"We got ourselves in a little bit of a hole there," said Bill Turley, Lee's coach. "But we didn't quit. You know the way momentum swings. We felt that if we could have gotten a run, we could have been right back in the game."
Before the surge, the Generals stayed close as Tonya Owens scored eight points in the first period. But she got into foul trouble and sat out much of the second and third quarters before fouling out in the fourth.
Owens' absence and the Blacksburg defense prevented Lee from making any kind of a run.
The Indians defense was suffocating. It forced 31 turnovers, including nine in both the second and third quarters.
"We played our game," said Blacksburg guard April Rogers. "We played them to the right. We denied them the ball. We did what we had to do to get the job done."
Blacksburg's defense could not have picked a better time to sparkle. After the initial surge, the offense had its difficulties, hitting just 9-of-29 field-goal attempts after intermission.
"I didn't think we played as well in the second half, we did a lot of silly stuff," said Mickey McGuigan, Blacksburg's coach. "But we kept playing that hard defense."
by CNB