By Josh Staloch
Correspondent
GREEN BAY – The Notre Dame Academy girls’ basketball team picked up another convincing Fox River Classic Conference win Dec. 10.
The Tritons traveled to Green Bay Preble High School and left with a 52-33 win.
The victory moved Notre Dame to 3-1 overall and 2-0 in conference play, while the Hornets (1-3, 0-2) lost their third straight game.
A slow offensive start to the game saw the Hornets up 5-2 midway through the first half, but as soon as the Tritons got aggressive with their full-court defense, they started forcing turnovers.
Notre Dame’s Charley Apple tied things up at seven with a three-pointer from the corner.
Preble’s Carley Duffney responded at the other end with a drive to the hoop along the baseline with a defender in front of her.
Duffney put away a pair of free throws not long after to give the Hornets an 11-9 lead, forcing the Tritons to take a timeout with five minutes to play in the opening half.
The break in the action would be the turning point in the game, as Notre Dame came back firing on all cylinders.
Not only did the Tritons’ press remain effective for the rest of the half, but their offense came to life as well.
Sammy Opichka gave Notre Dame its first lead since the game’s opening basket by connecting on a three-pointer coming out of the timeout for a 12-11, one they extended to 19-11 by the end of a low-scoring half.
The Tritons forced 16 turnovers in the first 20 minutes of play.
“We like to pressure,” said Notre Dame head coach Sara Rohde. “We like to play up-tempo. We thought this was something we could take advantage of with our athleticism and quickness. We were able to cause a lot of problems with our press. That was our offense, that’s what we like to do. We try to read and react to what the defense gives us. Our girls were making great passes to the open cutters, and we were lucky our shots were falling.”
In the second half, Emily Cribben hit from beyond the arc to give the Tritons a 26-14 lead.
Moments later, teammate Georgia Gregoire notched a steal and then connected on a 13-foot jumper at the other end of the floor.
Anytime the Hornets looked like they might start to claw their way back into the game, the Notre Dame defense had an answer.
A good portion of Preble’s turnovers equaled easy points at the other end, including an Opichka three-pointer at the 11-minute mark to increase the lead to 39-20.
Opichka led all scorers with 21 points.
“We knew [the pressure] was coming,” said Preble’s Kendall Renard. “We have to do a better job of filling our roles and doing what we need to do to get around it. We needed to make better passes and better decisions. We’re going to be working on everything this week in practice – being more physical and hitting the ground for loose balls. If we get more aggressive, our game will get better.”
Renard finished with a double-double after pulling down 12 boards to go along with her team-high 11 points.