By Ted Waddell
LIBERTY — February 12, 2002 – In most Dungeons and Dragons stories, the sorcerers defeat the mythical creatures on ancient wizardry lore.
But in Friday night’s OCIAA Division III girls’ varsity basketball game at Liberty, the Lady Dragons of Cornwall (12-4, 8-1 OCIAA) defeated the home team Lady Indians, 42-25.
In the first period, Liberty ( 5-12, 3-7 OCIAA) jumped out to an early lead, but watched it wither away as the Lady Dragons fought back to take a 8-6 advantage at the end of those opening eight minutes of play.
Spurred on by Coach Ted Crowley, the Lady Indians tied it up 15-15# with seconds remaining in the first half. But an attempted steal backfired, and Cornwall took a 17-15 lead into the locker room.
In the deciding third period, the Lady Dragons made some adjustments to Liberty’s aggressive defensive pressure to outscore the Lady Indians by a 16-10 margin.
The Lady Indians tried to come back in the closing frame, but were outgunned, 9-4.
Ericka Edsall# reached double digits for Cornwall (15 points), while Andrea TerBush was high scorer for Liberty with eight points.
At the free throw line, Liberty was five-of-10 (50 percent) and Cornwall converted 11-of-15 (73 percent).
“It’s always a tough game when we come up# here to play Liberty,” Cornwall Coach Tito Maisonet said.
Maisonet noted that before the start of the contest, he told his team they have to prepare for every game, “we can’t play lazy ball.”
“In the first half, Liberty lived up# to that promise and played excellent defense against us,” he added. “In the second half, we were a little more patient with our offense and cut down on our fouls.”
Crowley liked the way the Lady Indians competed.
“For little 3-6 Liberty, our team came to play basketball,” he said. “We moved and hustled in the first half and took away a lot of things Cornwall wanted to do, but they outplayed us in the second half.
“For us, it was a tremendous performance against a really good basketball team.”
Crowley also enjoyed the total team effort his squad displayed.
“The girls performed beautifully coming off the bench,” he said. “Abby DeJesus came off the bench and did a tremendous job of boxing out and helping out defensively . . . we went to the bench, and the girls played well collectively.”
According to Crowley, he still hopes to make the sectionals with three games remaining in regular season play this week as the Lady Indians confront James I. O’Neill, John S. Burke Catholic School and Fallsburg.
TerBush, a 16-year-old Liberty junior, has been playing varsity for the Lady Indians since ninth grade.
“We played really good in the first half, but kind of lost our intensity in the second half,” she said.
Her take on the 2001-2002 hoops season?
“We’ve had chances to win games, but we didn’t,” said TerBush. “Overall, it’s been pretty good.”