Girls Basketball: Big start to 2nd half propels Ridge past Montgomery
The halftime speeches in the Ridge High School girls basketball team's locker room primarily are encouraging.
If you're coach Cherie Stappenbeck, so are the immediate results.
Eighth-seeded Ridge extended its four-point halftime lead to 12 with eight unanswered points to start the third quarter Monday night and never again saw its lead dip below eight in a 51-35 victory against ninth-seeded Montgomery in the second round of the Somerset County Tournament.
"Honestly, they were playing well in the first half," said Stappenbeck, whose team has made a recent habit of saving its best play for the second half. "They were getting good shots and rebounding. I just told them to focus on their finishing."
Junior forward Alexis Irwin listened well. Irwin scored eight of her 16 points during the third quarter, including six during an 8-0 run that spanned the first 83 seconds. She also grabbed a team-high eight rebounds.
"With that girl, I have no idea where it comes from," Stappenbeck said. "There are some games where she just explodes."
Irwin's effort provided a strong complement to senior forward Susan Galgano, who finished with a team-high 18 points.
"We had really good position," Galgano said of what allowed her and Irwin to make a difference, "and it was a good job by our guards to find us when sometimes they couldn't even see us."
Galgano scored 10 first-half points as Ridge, which will visit top-seeded Bridgewater-Raritan in next Saturday's quarterfinals, built an 18-14 lead. The lead changed hands eight times during a tight first half but a layup by Galgano put the Red Devils (5-12) ahead for good, 15-14.
"She is so consistent and so smooth," said Stappenbeck, whose team won for just the second time in its past 10 games. "Our guards saw the floor really well and got us a lot of opportunities underneath."
Montgomery, which had won three of its past six games, cut its deficit to eight four times in the final 12 minutes but could not generate enough support for Carlee Rosenthal. The senior guard poured in a game-high 23 points and either scored or assisted on all six of the team's second-half field goals.
The Cougars (6-14) managed foul trouble to several key players throughout the second half, and no other player scored more than six points.
Rosenthal's 3-pointer with six seconds left in the third quarter made it 35-25, and she sank a floater in the lane with five minutes remaining to bring it to 39-31.
But Ridge, which will make its first SCT quarterfinals appearance since 2005, shot 6 of 6 at the free-throw during the fourth quarter and closed on a 12-4 run.
"I think everyone just really wanted this game. We were really excited," Galgano. "It feels really good to advance."