Batavia girls basketball heats up in second half, beats Lake Park

Batavia struggled on offense in the first half of its DuKane Conference opener against Lake Park Wednesday night, but the Bulldogs’ tenacious defense kept the team in the game.

Batavia led by a point, 18-17, at halftime.

The host Bulldogs sank only six baskets in the first 16 minutes but limited the Lancers to the same number. Batavia forced 13 first half turnovers and outrebounded the Lancers 20-10.

Batavia finally found its shooting touch, especially from beyond the arc, in the second half to pull away from the Lancers for a 47-36 victory. The Bulldogs buried six 3-pointers in the last two quarters.

“In the first half, we had a lot of close ones that rimmed out, 3s that weren’t falling and a lot of 3s that we were shooting really deep,” Batavia coach Kevin Jensen said. “We felt like if we kept the tempo where we wanted it, eventually we would get a couple of shots to fall and that would favor us a little bit. We hung in there and road it out pretty well.

“I liked the looks we got. We knew eventually they would start to fall.”

Lake Park (4-2, 0-1) also had a hand in limiting the Bulldogs’ offense.

“They did a good job. We play uptempo a lot, but when we did run a couple of our sets, they were right on us,” said the Batavia coach.

“Sometimes it takes a while to get into our grove. But we feel like the defensive effort will bring a good offensive one, so during the first half we reminded each other that we got to keep getting stops and hope that our offense will kick in,” said Julia Arulandu, who led Batavia scoring with 12 points.

Sam Jansey (11 points) drained the Bulldogs’ first trey of the second half 30 seconds into the third quarter for a 21-17 lead. Batavia (4-2, 1-0) was unable to increase its margin.

The pesky Lancers pulled with a point twice during the frame, the second time with 57 seconds left in the third quarter on Allison Gogola’s pullup jumper. The junior led all scorers with 18 points.

A Hallie Crane (10 points) bucket, followed by Arulandu’s 3-pointer from the right wing, gave Batavia its biggest lead of the game at the end of the quarter, 34-29.

The Bulldogs opened up the game with a 9-3 run in the fourth quarter. Batavia’s defense stymied Lake Park’s offense during the last eight minutes. The Lancers did not score until a Gogola trey from the left wing with 54 seconds left on the clock.

“We put a ton of focus on defense,” Jensen said. “We stress getting multiple stops in a row.”

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