HOWLAND SNAPS LEOPARDS WIN STREAK
By Noah Ricks
HOWLAND CENTER, OH – 1-4 may seem like a disappointing start on paper, but Howland girls’ coach Aaron Pounds believes that his team is playing strong to start their season. That mentality showed as the Tigers beat the Louisville Leopards 69-65 on their home floor Saturday. Although the Leopards were 5-1 coming into the contest, this is exactly what Pounds expected from his girls.
“I don’t think it was an upset, and I don’t think our season starting off was that disappointing, if I’m being honest with you,” Pounds told YSN’s Noah Ricks. “Anybody that looks at our schedule can see that we played some really, really quality teams, and it actually prepared us for a game like tonight. I think Hoover has been undefeated, Salem was 6-0 at one point, Massillon Perry, their only loss was to Canfield. We got Ursuline, now we just got Louisville, so Louisville was 5-1 coming into here. Our schedule’s been really, really brutal. First game, we lost by one, so disappointing in the fact because of the record, maybe a little bit, but every single game these girls have played hard.”
The Tigers had three players score in double figures against the Leopards. Along with Alyssa Pompelia’s 16 and Taylor Lawrence’s 19 came a dominant 22-point night from sophomore Alyssa Massucci, arguably the best game of her career. She attacked the glass aggressively as layups were going in left and right. Pounds believes that this was the night where she showed her true potential.
“She’s had a couple of games where she’s missed a couple of shots, missed a couple of bunnies. She made them tonight, she knocked them down. We got her a couple of minutes in JV. The last two games, she’s lit up JV in one quarter, so I think that kind of gave her some confidence, ready to come in and play tonight, even though she’s a Varsity starter. We’ve been kind of hit with injuries, a little bit of the flu bug, and we’re down to 13 girls. We lost another one tonight, so we’re down to like 12 girls right now, so that’s the reason we played one of our Varsity starters. She’s only a sophomore, she only played a quarter of JV, so we needed it. That really built up our confidence.”
Howland built up a strong lead in the fourth as they went ahead by fifteen at 58-43, but Louisville came storming out as their hot-shooting girls pushed the lead down to as little as five. Coach Pounds wanted to regroup after they were not able to stop shots from the free throw line throughout most of the night. He wanted to tell his girls one important thing.
“I was telling them, be patient, work the ball, be smart, and nothing but a layup. There’s no reason to fire up threes, there’s no reasons to shoot a bad shot, nothing but a layup. Don’t lose your aggressiveness. You know, when we broke the press, we still attacked the rim and we got a couple of easy layups and we made a couple of free throws at the line. That’s been kind of an Achille heels for us, too, is we missed a lot of free throws in the first couple of games. ”
The Lady Tigers with the win will improve to 2-4 on the year, a record which matches their mark in non-league play. They will stay home on Wednesday to play their first AAC game of the year against a powerful Boardman team. Pounds knows the importance of this game as he was telling this to his girls in the locker room.
“That’s a league game. We start our league Wednesday. I actually just told the girls that. It’s almost a new season. We’re 0-0 going into the league, so I want to win the league, I think Boardman, it’s not an easy league. We have got some good quality teams up there, so we have got to come ready to play. Our schedule early on has really prepared us to get ready to come in here and play our league, so we will be ready to go.”
The Leopards, on the other hand, will only drop their second game of the year as they drop to 5-2 overall. They will go back home on Wednesday as they play host to Akron Coventry.
