TROY \u2013 With a bid to the Class AA state semifinals at stake, the Bethlehem girls’ basketball team put on an eight-minute basketball clinic in the first quarter and never looked back.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem (12-11) scored the game\u2019s first 20 points with timely shooting while its harassing defense kept Section 3 champion Oswego (14-9) from getting in any sort of flow as the Eagles advanced to the next round with a 64-41 win Friday night at Hudson Valley Community College.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them just to be present, don\u2019t worry about what happened before, don\u2019t worry about what is to come,\u201d Bethlehem coach Trish Piccini said. \u201cJust play every play, they just embraced that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liz Kearney had 12 of her 13 points in the opening quarter, while eighth-grader Brynn Elfeldt added six of her game-high 21 points in the quarter and the Bethlehem defense kept Oswego off the scoreboard until 12.6 seconds remained in the first.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeam confidence is very high, everyone is putting forth great effort, we have great chemistry and we are working together,\u201d Elfeldt said. \u201cThe start really, really helped us. We\u2019ve been starting games great and it really helped us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elfeldt scored the game\u2019s first four points and was consistent throughout the game, scoring five points in each of the second, third and fourth quarters.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe is so calm, cool, and collected. She plays way beyond an eighth-grader,\u201d Piccini said. \u201cShe has done things when other girls score 20, she would get 12, 15, 10 (points), but she would always get shots throughout the year, so I think she was comfortable in that position and she took advantage of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethlehem held Oswego to 31.9 percent shooting for the game and recorded 15 steals, led by seven from\u00a0Griesbach.<\/p>\n
Griesbach finished the game with 13 points and a team-high 10 rebounds to go with five assists, while Kearney had four assists and five steals.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem led 33-21 at halftime but knew the game was far from over.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey (Oswego) didn\u2019t get here by surprise,\u201d Piccini said. \u201cIt was really about staying the course and playing our game because they were going to come back and they did, they made a run. They didn\u2019t come here for nothing, so I knew that. We continued to play our game. We just stayed steady, didn\u2019t get flustered. We were going to play until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Midway through the third, Oswego cut the deficit to 38-27, the closest the Buccaneers would come after the first quarter, but the Eagles rattled off the final eight points of the third quarter on baskets by Makaya McCann, Lily Griesbach, Macy Young and Elfeldt to take a 46-27 lead into the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were talking about better ball movement (at halftime),\u201d Kearney said. \u201cWe wanted to have a good third quarter, get a good start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethlehem will face either Westhampton Beach or Nyack in the semifinals next Saturday at 3:15 at Hudson Valley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TROY \u2013 With a bid to the Class AA state semifinals at stake, the Bethlehem girls’ basketball team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,47172,1215,726],"class_list":["post-150170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-hs-basketball-girls","tag-latestnews","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}