by It was a commanding defensive effort from the St. Joe’s Jaguars from start to finish tonight in their 52-35 victory. I spoke with Coach Swanson-Haan about her teams defense tonight, “We’ve been working really hard and making defensive adjustments, and I think they are really starting to pay off.” One of those names working hard is former Westlake Demon, now Jaguar, Taylor Gregory, coach had this to share about Taylor, “she is always intense and physically strong, she can also handle the ball very well”.
The Jaguars shared the ball very well and had numerous girls reach the stat sheet. They were led by Morgan Wearsch with 19. As mentioned, Gregory, who played for Swanson-Haan as a freshman in 2019-2020, is coming of age and it showed again tonight with 7 big points. Elise Larsen had 8 key points while Maddie Roth put in 9. Abbey Flannery controlled the floor at times while scoring 7 points as well. Bre White finished the scoring for St. Joes with 2.
The Highland Hornets were paced by Kennedy Morgan with 16 and Grace Shondel with 6.
The Jaguars raced out to a 10-2 lead thanks in part to hot shooting from Maddie Roth with 5, and Abbey Flannery with 3 to get them going. The real story of the first quarter was the Jaguars defense actually, as they held the Highland Hornets without a field goal until 18 seconds remained on the clock in the quarter. The Jaguars led 15-5 after one when Morgan Wearsch drained a three at the buzzer.
The defensive pressure would continue for the Jaguars as once again, they only allowed a single field goal by Highland in the early moments of the quarter and then not again until 59 seconds remained on a run out by Kennedy Morgan. Meanwhile, they used that stretch to pile up the points and take a double-digit lead with buckets by Abbey Flannery and Elise Larsen. The Jaguars took a 28-16 lead into the break.
The Jaguars combined intense defensive pressure with sharp shooting to increase the lead to 35-18 with 2:45 to go in the third. They got clutch shooting from Maddie Roth combined with another three ball from Morgan Wearsch. The quarter finished out with St. Joe’s on top 37-24 as Highland made a mini run but not enough to cut it to single digits as we headed to the fourth and final quarter of the day.
Highland needed one last push to get back in it, and they did just that by rattling off 5 straight points to start the fourth quarter and cut the Jaguar lead to 37-28. A Taylor Gregory shot would slow the Hornet run and give control firmly back to St. Joe’s as they took off and took over from there with 8 points from Wearsch in the first four minutes of the quarter to bring it to 48-33. They moved on to win 52-35.
This was game 5 of 5 from Baldwin Wallace today for the first annual Cleveland Basketball Classic.
Great game by St.Joes , what a well coached team. These girls believe in the system. Nice to see the Gregory girl have a nice game. I bet the Westlake coach who I saw sitting in the crowd wishes he had her back.Go Jags