Sat. Jan 18th, 2025

The Bellwood-Antis girls basketball team traveled to Allport to play their game with West Branch on Wednesday night. Although the game had been postponed from Tuesday because of the icy weather, the Lady Blue Devils showed no ill effects of the one-day layoff, outscoring the West Branch girls in all four quarters to even their record at 6-6 for the 2004-05 campaign with a 59-33 triumph.
The game was close throughout the first half with the Lady Blue Devils putting up slim 10-9 and 11-10 scoring margins in the first two quarters to creep into a two-point, 21-19 advantage at the halftime intermission.
Lauren Carter and Steph Hatch shared the scoring for the victors with both scoring double-doubles. Carter led the scoring with 22 points and pulled down 16 rebounds. Hatch backed that up with 20 points and 10 boards.
“This was probably the first night when both Lauren and Steph had big games on the same night,” said Bellwood-Antis coach Nick Lovrich. “Individually, they have been doing it for us all season, but not in the same game very often. Tonight everything clicked on offense. Steph was real assertive all game. We have been telling her to drive more and take her shots, take control. Tonight that’s what she did.
“Lauren was taking shots beyond where she normally does. We have faith in her and tonight she was making them.”
The Lady Blue Devils began to pull away in the third quarter taking a 16-9 advantage to go into the final eight minutes with a more comfortable 37-28 lead and then ran away with it in the fourth quarter outscoring the West Branch girls 22-5 for the 26-point victory.
“The kids played real well defensively. One of our goals before the game was to limit West Branch to under 40 points,” explained Lovrich. “We put our half-court press on and in the second half and particularly in the fourth quarter, we were able to take advantage of it to score a lot of points on turnovers and put the game out of reach. In the fourth quarter, we were able to get a lot of steals, when our defense really clamped down on West Branch. We were able to hold their leading scorer under her average and keep everybody else in single digits.”
Olivia Beveredge led the Lady Warriors with 13 points.
West Branch won the junior varsity contest 35-26 besting the Bellwood-Antis jayvees in one of the B-A girls closest contests of the season. Jessica Parson led B-A with eight points.
The Lady Blue Devils (6-6) are at home against Southern Huntingdon tonight and then play at Juniata Valley on Saturday in a makeup of a game postponed from last week. Both contests began at 6 p.m. with junior varsity actionand varsity to follow.
Bellwood-Antis 59 West Branch 33
Bellwood-Antis – Hatch 10-0-0 21, Ralston 2 0-0 4, Sinisi 1 0-0 2, Carter 10 2-2 22, Smith 2 0-0 5, Claar 1 0-0 2, Webb 0 0-1 0, Young 0 0-0 0, Myers 0 0-0 0, Hunter 0 0-0 0, Parson 1 0-0 2, Mortimore 0 0-0 0, Riley 0 1-2 1. TOTALS 26 3-5 59.
West Branch – Larson 1 0-0 2, Fenush 4 0-1 8, Beveredge 5 3-6 13, Howell 2 0-0 4, Amick 1 0-0 2, Catalina 0 1-4 1, Perks 0 0-0 0, Shifflet 1 0-0 2, Parks 0 1-2 1, Wesesky 0 0-1 0. TOTALS 14 5-14 33.
Score by Quarters
Bellwood-Antis 10 11 16 22 – 59
West Branch 9 10 9 5 – 33
Three point goals: Bellwood-Antis 2 (Hatch 1, Smith 1).
West Branch none.

By Rick