The faces may be a bit different, but the attitude is still the same for the Hereford Bulls: Play defense, and score in transition.
Hereford scored Friday night’s final 15 points, holding visiting North Harford scoreless for nearly seven minutes to close the game in a 46-27 nonconference victory.
The Bulls were led by Gabby Viscuso and Chloe Martin, who each scored 13 points. The Hawks were led by Peyton Dawson’s 10 points.
“They were more aggressive to start the second half. Later on, we started to pressure them and I think it wore them down some,” Viscuso said. “Later in the game I thought we played well, especially defensively.”
The two teams both started out slowly and the game was tied at 6 after the first quarter. Hereford started to respond in the second.
The Bulls got two buckets from Viscuso and a 3-point play from Anna Orner to take a 13-6 lead. The Bulls’ defense started to speed the Hawks up, and then the shots started to fall. Hereford got 3-pointers from Orner, Viscuso and Hannah Shehadeh to take a 24-16 lead into the halftime break.
When the teams returned to the court, it was North Harford that turned up the defensive intensity. The Hawks slowly began chipping away at the lead, outscoring Hereford 6-2 out of the locker room to cut the margin to 26-22 and force Herford coach Ray Burrows to call a time-out.
“They were beating our offense up a little bit,” Burrows said. “We weren’t running our offense all the way through and we were getting one look. They were also out-rebounding us.”
After the timeout, North Harford’s Lauren Nicholson hit a free throw to make it a one-possession game at 26-23 with 3:59 left in the third quarter.
That’s when the Bulls defense came alive.
Hereford started pressuring the ball and turning over North Harford. The Bulls went on a 5-2 run to take a 31-25 lead into the final quarter.
The Hawks used a Dawson layup to cut the margin to 31-27 with 6:56 left in the game, but never scored again. The Hereford pressure got turned up and it wore on the North Harford shooters. Meanwhile, the Hereford was clicking, ending the game on a 15-0 run.
“We turned the defensive intensity up [late in the game],” Burrows said. “We won this game with our defense. We were struggling with our shooting, but our defense played very well.”
For North Harford, the loss was a learning experience.
“We hung with them for a half,” Hawks coach Jason Staiger said. “In the second half we got a little out of sync. They started putting some pressure on some of the stuff we’re still working on right now. We made some adjustments in our press-break, then we got a little tired. It just didn’t happen for us tonight.”
Hereford 46, North Harford 27
NH 6 10 9 2 – 27
HE 6 18 7 15 – 46
NH – Dawson 10, Signor 3, Dinbokowitz 7, Appleby 2, Nicholson 3, Barndt 2.
HE – Martin 13, Viscuso 13, Orner 8, Shehadeh 5, Elser 1, Kanning 2, Reynolds 4.
Have a news tip? Contact sports editor Anthony Maluso at amaluso@baltsun.com, 567-230-6024, x.com/TonySunSports and instagram.com/TonySunSports.
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