Kelly Green still cruising in NCAA League

Posted 7/25/11

[caption id="attachment_7569" align="alignleft" width="204" caption="In NCAA League action, Lehigh recruit and recent Mount St. Joseph grad Mary Jo Horgan (left) prepares to pass the ball over former …

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Kelly Green still cruising in NCAA League

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[caption id="attachment_7569" align="alignleft" width="204" caption="In NCAA League action, Lehigh recruit and recent Mount St. Joseph grad Mary Jo Horgan (left) prepares to pass the ball over former Archbishop Carroll star Erin Shields (now at St. Joseph’s U.). (Photo by Tom Utescher)"][/caption]

by Tom Utescher

In NCAA Summer League action last Tuesday, number one Kelly Green convincingly repulsed another title contender, beating the Orange team 78-54. Players with local ties were on both sides in Purple’s 68-58 win over Cardinal Red, and a Germantown Academy grad led the White team in a come-from-behind barnburner against Royal Blue.

In one of the early games, GA’s Jesse Carey helped the White dig themselves out of a deep hole to eke out a 63-60 victory over Royal Blue. Royal plays well together, since the squad is structured around half-a-dozen players from Holy Family University, a program that is always nationally ranked in NCAA Division II.

Down by as many as 19 points during the first half, the White women had reduced their deficit slightly by halftime, when the tally was 40-27. It took Carey’s club most of the second half to finally overtake the Royal Blue bunch, and she would lead the way with a game-high 21 points. The Villanova junior hit her team’s last three points from the foul line, where she shot ten-for-12 for the night.

Next door, league-leading Kelly Green was squaring off against one of the two teams tied for second place, the Orange franchise. The Orange owned a modest 8-5 advantage with a few minutes elapsed, but Mount St. Joe grad Elle Hagedorn stole the ball and scored on the break for Kelly Green, which went into the lead soon afterward.

The reversal of fortune eventually prompted the Orange side to call a time-out with 8:19 remaining in the opening half, when the score was 25-17. The deficit did not grow significantly after that for the Orange, but they still found themselves down by a 36-25 count at the interlude.

They needed to reduce the gap to single digits without delay, but instead Kelly Green came out smoking for the start of the second half, and in the space of five minutes had its lead up over 20 points, at 51-30. The teams were as far as 29 points apart later on, with the final margin settling in at 24. Hagedorn finished with four points and another former Mountie, Sarah McGorry, had eight. The winners got 13 points apiece from McGorry’s Lafayette College teammate, Kelly Loughney, and from Lehigh University’s Kelly Peterson.

In one of the late games, Chestnut Hill College alum Chant’al Hardy and newly-minted Mount graduate Mary Jo Horgan played for Cardinal Red. Opposing them for the Purple team were Nikki Guynn, a 2010 Penn Charter grad, and Cathy Peduzzi, who earned her diploma from GA late in the last century.

Down 37-34 at halftime, Cardinal Red gained a 40-39 lead early in the second period, then soon fell behind again. The Cardinal club was only down one, 54-53, when it called its final time-out with 6:36 left to play, but when the action resumed Purple pumped up its lead.

In overview, the Red’s hopes were washed away by a Purple rain of three-pointers by former Archbishop Carroll star Erin Shields (St. Joseph’s U.), who knocked down six treys as part of a game-high 23-point performance.

Peduzzi added two points for the winners, while Cardinal Red received six points from Horgan and two from Hardy. The leaders in the losing cause were Kaitlin Cole (Carroll/Holy Cross U.) and Alicia Manning (Cardinal O’Hara/Lafayette), with 11 points apiece.

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