Girls basketball: Kate Salisbury, hot shooting sparks Bureau Valley past Hall

MANLIUS - There’s nothing better than hot shooting that will help cure what ails you.

Bureau Valley, which has been struggling shooting of late, rode a hot start shooting to start the second half to turn a 4-point halftime deficit into a 4-point lead on the way to a 60-50 win over Hall in Three Rivers East action at the Storm Cellar Monday night.

On the night, the Storm shot 91% (11-12) on free throws and 40.5% (21-52) from the field, including an even more impressive 46% (7-15) on 3s.

“It was fun coming out like that. It’s the first time we’ve come out shooting that well in a long time,” BV coach Matt Wasilewski. “Even the shots we missed, we were getting it on the rim and giving them a chance to go in. We’ve been shooting under 30% as a team the last five or six games. That’s tough to win when you do that. We haven’t been shooting well from the rim either.”

“We’ve been telling them, ‘Hey, we’ve been missing wide open shots all year. ... They’ll fall.’ That was huge for us.”

It was just what the team needed, senior point guard Kate Salisbury said, who led the Storm with 24 points.

“I think we really needed this win. We have been in a huge shooting slump lately and I think this game helped us get out of that,” she said. “I think we all played very good and gave it our all the whole entire game. Hall is a good team and after losing to them the first time we knew what we had to fix to come out ahead.

“Our team is very happy with how we played tonight. We need to keep the momentum going to finish the season strong.”

Down 25-21 at intermission, the Storm struck quickly to open the second half. Senior Lynzey Cady scored twice and Salisbury and freshman Libby Endress each scored once to get the Storm going.

Salisbury followed a Hall basket with a 3-pointer and struck again for another to give the Storm a 35-29 lead.

McKenna Christiansen kept the Red Devils within shouting distance with 10 third-quarter points with the Storm settling for a 41-37 lead at quarter’s end.

Salisbury never cooled down. She struck for a 3-pointer to put the Storm up 52-42 with 3:25 left to play and hit another to make it 57-48 at the 2:00 mark, finishing with eight points in the fourth quarter, 16 for the second half.

Also for BV, Taylor Neuhalfen had 12 points, Endress 11 and Cady eight.

“Sals hit some shots for us. She had 24, which is outstanding, but the rest of the team was scoring six, eight, 10 points. That was key for us. It wasn’t just one person,” Wasilewski said.

It was Charlie Pellegrini and Christiansen who had the hot hand early for Hall. Christiansen had two 3-pointers and Pellegrini one to shoot the Red Devils to a 13-7 lead after the first quarter.

Pellegrini struck for another trey to open the second quarter, scoring five points to help Hall stake to a 25-21 halftime lead.

Christiansen led Hall with 19 points, but was shut out in the fourth quarter. Ella Sterling had 15 points, nine in the fourth quarter, and Pellegrini added 12.

“We played pretty good defense. Gave up too many points,” Wasilewski said. “They got some pretty good shooters themselves. Christiansen, what a career that young lady has had. And she’s tough to defend. That was a joint effort to try to guard her and the Pellegrini girl and Sterling and (Kennedy) Wozniak was killing us hiding along the baseline.”

Hall coach TJ Orlandi saw a lot of good things from his team, especially offensively.

“I told the girls I thought our offense was really good. We scored 50. That’s usually pretty solid,” he said. “I like the way we shot the ball. I thought we were aggressive. We’ve been struggling against a zone this year and I thought we had a really good zone offense early.

“I thought defensively, we could have some things better, especially in the second half. I was a little disappointed in the way we guarded Salisbury, because that was one we focused on. Getting a hand on her and knowing where she was at. She got too many good looks and she knocked them down. Seemed like everything they shot was going in. Some times you just tip your hat and say, ‘Good shooting.’”

The Storm (13-11, 5-4) hope to ride their momentum from this game into their final regular-season games and into the postseason.

“The girls haven’t been happy about (how we’ve been playing). I’m not happy about it. We know we’re better than we are. We’re 13-11 now with five regular-season games to go. We have something to prove,” Wasilewski said.

Notes: BV also won the F/S game 58-35. Emma Mussche had 20 points, Alivia Zemke 15 and Emma Wright 11. Natalia Zamora led Hall with 11 points.