HAZLE TWP. \u2014 Kaitlyn Bindas admittedly spent most of her Tuesday daydreaming.\u00a0If not a nervous wreck.<\/p>\n
She was 11 points from becoming just the 12th Hazleton Area girls\u2019 basketball player to hit the 1,000-point mark and one of a select few to do so in her junior year.<\/p>\n
The mere thought, however, made Bindas\u2019 school day a blur. The time from dismissal, through her pre-game meal and then her ride to Hughie McGeehan Gymnasium for a nonleague game against Scranton turned her fidgety; her wait through a lopsided junior varsity game was seemingly downright interminable.<\/p>\n
Even after she quickly racked up 10 points in the first quarter, including two of her trademark deep three-pointers, the wait continued into the second quarter. Knowing how close she was to the milestone, Hazleton Area fans rose to their feet for her next six shots, but each missed the mark.<\/p>\n
Finally, Bindas broke ahead of the pack in transition for a layup and the fans stood again in nervous anticipation. When her attempt banked off the glass and fell through the hoop, the scoreboard clocks froze at 5:07, play was stopped and the horn sounded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was a relief,\u201d Bindas said. \u201cI kind of thought about it (the milestone) on that last shot, more than the 10 threes I took before that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bindas finished with a game-high 21 points as the Lady Cougars cruised to a 64-35 win over Scranton, their fourth straight to start the season. But it was her 11th and 12th points that mattered most on this night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something I\u2019ve looked forward to since I was 10 years old. \u2026 I\u2019m just happy to get it out of the way,\u201d the 5-foot-5 guard said.<\/p>\n
Bindas admitted thinking in school \u201ca lot\u201d on Tuesday what kind of shot would put her over the 1,000 mark. Would it be a deep three from the top of the key or the corner? Would it be a free throw?\u201d Would she leak out on a fast break? Sort of like someone picking their lottery dream house. She wouldn\u2019t go wrong with any of he above.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I got much work done today, but it\u2019s all right,\u201d she laughed. \u201cOnce the game started, I kind of just played my game. I didn\u2019t realize how close I was until I looked up (at the scoreboard and I was like, \u2018Oh my God, I\u00a0 already have 10 points.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the game itself, Hazleton Area didn\u2019t have its \u201cA\u201d game against the Lady Knights. But even with their sloppy play and inconsistent shooting, the Lady Cougars played well enough in spurts to build an 18-2 lead in the first six minutes and coast to their third consecutive victory in the series since Scranton handed the Lady Cougars their last non-league loss at McGeehan in December 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should be happy when you win by 30 (points) over a team that Dallas just beat by only one and should have won that game,\u201d Lady Cougars head coach Joe Gavio said. \u201cWe know that we can do better. We were rushing things a little bit too much, but they were excited for everything going on here tonight and we do have a big game coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bindas was the only Hazleton Area player in double figures with 21 points, but Kayla Lagowy and Molly Temchatin wound up with season highs of nine points apiece.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did a really good job,\u201d Scranton head coach P.J. Hughes said. \u201cThe way they\u2019re moving the ball, scoring off a miss or turnover with out dribbling the ball is impressive. If you\u2019re giving them those opportunities, they\u2019re going to take advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhylee Bell topped Scranton with 13 points. Chrissy Jacklinski added six on two field goals and two free throws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAZLE TWP. \u2014 Kaitlyn Bindas admittedly spent most of her Tuesday daydreaming.\u00a0If not a nervous wreck. She was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[5523,305,803,28,231,178,180,179,726,729],"class_list":["post-57598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-carbon-county","tag-high-school-sports","tag-luzerne-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-sports","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57598","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=57598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}