Tuesday, Dec. 04 2012 3:02PM
Truman trounces Broncos in final
By Ryan Weaver
Special to the Journal
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ReprintA young Lee’s Summit North team had trouble finding the basket and Truman came out on fire Nov. 30 in the championship game of the 2012 Bronco Invitational, a recipe that led to a lopsided 47-27 Truman win.
A combination of Imani Johnson getting double- and triple-teamed in the post and the Broncos shooting 2-for-19 from behind the arc made for a long night for North. The result: the Broncos shot 22 percent on the night.
“You’ve got to shoot better,” Bronco head coach Tricia Lillygren said. “We shot poorly on wide-open shots. But they took over the game. They executed very well. They played a wonderful game. Truman deserved every bit that they earned today and it’s their championship.”
It took almost four minutes for the Broncos to get on the scoreboard, a sign of how they would struggle to score the rest of the game. Johnson knocked down one of two free throws at the 4:05 mark and then added a three-pointer to close the gap to 6-4, but Truman extended the lead to 13-7 by the end of the first quarter.
Johnson scored a team-high 11 points. After getting surrounded down low early in the game, she started to make her way more to the perimeter.
“We haven’t really tried (Johnson playing on the perimeter) much in the game,” Lillygren said. “We thought this might be an opportune time to do that and see what happened, but it’s really not what we’re anticipating having to do all the time. We’ll go to it if we have to because she’s really expanded her game on the perimeter.”
Truman pulled away in the second quarter, going on a 12-3 run fueled by five points from Rebecca Jonas. The Patriots led by 29-14 at half.
“We were talking about you can’t play against the score-clock at this point,” Lillygren said. “You’ve got to play against yourselves and execute the way you want to and chip away to come back. We tried to sell that and I think it was a much better third quarter for us.”
After 10 turnovers in the first half, the Broncos only committed two in the third quarter and got a couple of buckets off offensive rebounds; sophomore Taylor Shortell scored six points, five of them in the second half, including the team’s second 3-pointer at the 1:10 mark of the third.
But Truman kept scoring and took a 41-22 advantage into the final frame. Jonas led the Patriots with 13 points and Kayla Harrell added 10.
The young Broncos, who started a freshman, a sophomore, two juniors and a senior, dropped to 3-1 on the season.
“We are so young. We’re playing freshman and sophomores and kids that have had zero experience before this year, so we’re making it,” Lillygren said. “We’re getting there. We’re very thrilled to be in the championship game of a great tournament, a tough tournament and hopefully we’ll fare better next time.”
