Pawtucket Times

Rodrigues, Galva power Warriors

Davies Tech heartened by first-half performance against unbeaten CF

By BRANDEN MELLO bmello@woonsocketcall.com

CENTRAL FALLS —The Central Falls girls basketball team knew visiting Davies Tech was going to come out in a triangle-and-two defense to try and slow down Warrior standouts Pamela Galva and Joanna Rodrigues in Wednesday night’s Division III showdown.

The Patriots came in a triangle-and-two to start, but it was not what the Warriors were expecting. Davies coach Matt Kerwin bracketed Galva with guards Jaylene Sanchez and Destiny Marreo and dared the rest of theWarriors to score.

Kerwin’s gamble paid off for long stretches of the first quarter, but eventually Rodrigues took advantage of all the additional space in the lane. The senior forward scored nine of her game-high 17 points in the opening quarter to give the Warriors a comfortable lead. Galva eventually found her rhythm and scored 13 of her 17 points in the second half of a 51-26 victory.

“That’s the first team that’s played that kind of defense on me this year,” Galva said. “It was definitely hard to deal with it, but I knew that if they were double teaming me someone else was going to be open. I just had to get the defenders away from them and stay calm to help my teammates. Joanna was awesome today and the first thing I’m looking to do when I get the ball is throw it to her.”

“We game planed for that because we felt that something was going to be different,” CF coach Nick Lafreneiere said. “I thought Davies was going to try to take both of those girls out of the game, but they did their own thing. The emphasis was to get Joanna the ball on the block against their weaker forward and go to work.”

Davies Tech (9-2 Division III) viewed Wednesday’s game as a free roll – an opportunity to experiment with different defenses if the two teams meet against in the Division IV final at the Murray Center. There were certainly bright spots for the Patriots, including the play of talented freshman forward Amiyah Gomes, who scored five points and was a problem for the Warriors on the offensive glass. Senior Fatou Coulibaly had a team-high six points.

Davies was down just nine points at halftime, but the Patriots’ transition defense completely fell apart in the second half, which led to far too many uncontested baskets for Galva and junior wing Kamila Pizarro, who scored all 11 of her points in the second half.

“They beat us by 30 in our gym and our goal tonight was to make them feel us and be physical,” Kerwin said. “We want to see them again at RIC and I believe the first half laid the blueprint for us. We just need to replicate that for the whole game because we played 20 minutes of real good defense and then ran out of gas. If a few more buckets fall, I think it’s a much different game.”

Central Falls (9-0 Division III) faces another title contender Friday night when the Warriors travel to thirdplace Johnston. The Warriors already own a 25-point home win over the Panthers. The Warriors know that if they have any shot of finishing in the top 18 of the Open tournament ranking, they need to go undefeated.

The Warriors faced a little bit of adversity in a league game for the first time all season in the opening quarter when the Patriots took Galva out of the game and forced the rest of the Warriors to handle the ball. CF didn’t score a point for the first 3:21 and they only led 10-7 at the end of the quarter thanks to nine points from Rodrigues.

CF didn’t help its cause with eight turnovers in the quarter and 31 for the game. The Patriots only committed 17.

“We’re challenging ourselves to move the ball more and get better shots rather than just shoot,” Galva said. “We can’t be rushed and that’s why we’re committing turnovers. The game has to be slowed down and you can’t always want to score fast. That was our problem early in the quarter. We tried to blow them out early, but really we needed to settle down.”

The Patriots didn’t score a basket for the first six minutes of the second quarter, which allowed the Warriors to open up a double-digit lead. Emma Ise made a late 3-pointer to cut the deficit to nine at halftime, but the Warriors – more specifically Galva and Pizarro – blew the game open in the third quarter.

The Warriors scored 21 points in the quarter to build a 23-point advantage. Pizarro, who recently moved to Central Falls from Bolivia, had one of her best games of the season, scoring eight points in the quarter. She added three more in the final quarter, as the Warriors remained undefeated.

“I call her the Scottie Pippen of our team,” Lafreniere said of Pizarro. “She’s the complimentary player who can do it all and is very unselfish and most importantly she takes pride on the defensive end. She was the catalyst and I told her, ‘We did this because of you tonight.’”

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2023-02-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2023-02-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://pawtuckettimes.pressreader.com/article/281728388666153

Alberta Newspaper Group