St. Bede capitalizes on size advantage to beat Marquette

Early on Wednesday, St. Bede post players Lia Bosnich and Ryann Stoudt established their presence down low.

The 6-foot-1 Bosnich scored eight points and grabbed five rebounds in the first quarter and the 6-0 Stoudt had eight points in the second as the Lady Bruins earned a 49-40 victory over Marquette in a non-conference game in Peru.

“Ryann was especially strong with going to the basket,” St. Bede coach Tom McGunnigal said. “She really got her feet underneath her and went strong. Lia was tough inside. It was great to see her pour points into the bucket and there were more for her to grab there. Both of them just played phenomenal games. We needed that. It was huge.”

Bosnich finished with 16 points and 13 boards, while Stoudt added 10 points and seven rebounds as the Lady Bruins held a 51-27 rebounding advantage against a Lady Crusader squad used to having a size disadvantage.

“Every game we’ve been the shorter team,” Marquette coach Eric Price said. “It’s tough. We don’t have many post players and a lot of girls playing in the post, it’s their first year playing there. They’ve been wings. Give St. Bede credit for getting the ball to the block and working the ball until they got a good look on the block. They killed us on the boards. Both post players kind of had their way with us.”

A 3-pointer by Payton Giordano gave St. Bede the lead for good at 8-5 with 4:10 left in the first quarter, and the Lady Bruins led 15-7 after the opening eight minutes.

Three consecutive buckets by Stoudt pushed St. Bede’s lead to 11 points with 48.6 seconds left in the first half, but a basket by Lilly Craig and a 3-pointer by Miah Ferracuti cut Marquette’s deficit to 25-19 at the break.

“There was a little bit of a lapse there at the end of the first half where we kind of kicked it in neutral and let them hit some shots,” McGunnigal said. “We needed to be reminded at halftime that they’re shooters. We kind of forgot about that. I’m glad we still had the lead at halftime. I thought in the second half our energy was strong. Everybody came out tough.”

The Lady Crusaders managed to cut the gap to three on two occasions in the third quarter, but entered the fourth down 37-31.

“We came out flat. We started to recover a little bit in then second quarter,” Price said. “We won the second quarter, then we come out in the third and it’s more of then same. We got killed on the boards. We were not boxing out well. We were not getting a hand in girls’ faces. Offensively, we sort of lack identity trying to find something that’ working. We’re a young team, but at the same time, we’re a couple games in so some of the mistakes we’re making shouldn’t be happening.”

Along with Bosnich and Stoudt’s 26 combined points and 20 combined rebounds, Teghan Tillman contributed 11 points and 10 boards for the Lady Bruins (5-3), who bounced back from a 33-point loss Saturday.

“It felt great,” Bosnich said. “After Saturday, we were hanging our heads a little bit. Practice was hard. We were ready for this. We were all confident in the locker room. We were all getting hyped for this game. We were all just ready.”

Josie Eager led the Lady Crusaders (3-4) with 11 points, Izzy Garkey had nine points and Eva McCallum added eight points.

St. Bede plays host to Newman for a Three Rivers Conference game Thursday, while Marquette travels to Varna on Thursday to face Midland in a Tri-County Conference game.