The year is early but the Juneau-Douglas High School girls basketball team already has its first taste of championship gold.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears (3-0) bested Kenai on its home court 35-28 on Saturday to claim the Kenai River Classic championship trophy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe five starters are tough defenders,\u201d JDHS head coach Lesslie Knight said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to play off our defense. We have feisty guards that get on the ball.\u2019<\/p>\n
JDHS senior forward Tona Fogg scored a team-high eight points to lead a balanced offensive effort. Erica Hurtte added seven, followed by Alyxn Bohulano and Georgia Robinson with six, Cristine Arehart with four, and Caitlin Pusich and Cassie Dzinich added two each. Kallen Hoover did not play due to an injury sustained Thursday. Arehart also was named the tournament\u2019s MVP.<\/p>\n
The Kardinal\u2019s Hannah Drury led Kenai with nine points.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears jump out to an early 10-4 lead after the first quarter and increased the spread to 21-14 at halftime. The Crimson Bears defense never let the Kardinals get back into the game, even when two key players, Arehart and Bohulano, spent most of the second quarter on the bench due to foul trouble.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlyxn (Bohulano) is a very aggressive, … so hers are going to happen because she\u2019s so feisty on defense,\u201d Knight said.<\/p>\n
Despite getting few baskets, Kenai was near perfect from the free throw line in the first half, shooting 8-of-9. Then the Kardinals went cold, making just three free throws on nine attempts in the second. The Crimson Bears were 7-of-9 in the first half, and made nine shots from the charity stripe on 14 attempts for the game. The Crimson Bears also gave up just one three-pointer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole second half we tried to burn up time and rest on offense,\u201d Knight said, \u201cand we kept possession the majority of the time and we spread the floor and were patient. There\u2019s time when we\u2019ll say \u2018nothing but a layup.\u2019 … We didn\u2019t force unnecessary stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knight said she\u2019s been \u201cpleasantly surprised\u201d with the play of her three freshmen getting varsity minutes, Hurtte, Bohulano and Pusich.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll fit right in with the style I want to play,\u201d Knight said, referring to the team\u2019s stout defense. \u201cWe\u2019ll definitely be better than last year. We\u2019re young and a little inexperience, but we\u2019re going to play hard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The year is early but the Juneau-Douglas High School girls basketball team already has its first taste of championship gold. The Crimson Bears (3-0) bested Kenai on its home court 35-28 on Saturday to claim the Kenai River Classic championship trophy. \u201cThe five starters are tough defenders,\u201d JDHS head coach Lesslie Knight said. \u201cWe\u2019re going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-22057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22057"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=22057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}