Head coach Leslie Crane wanted her Allen women’s basketball team to play with urgency against Highland on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, the Lady Red Devils waited until the second half to take her seriously.
The Allen women (15-10) trailed Highland by 22 points at halftime before shooting 46.4% from the floor in the second half and managing to make it a one-point game in the final minutes of a 59-56 crushing loss.
The Allen men (19-7) fought neck and neck with Highland before pulling away behind some tough defense for a 66-53 victory.
Lady Red Devils
Allen didn’t show much will to win in the entirety of the first half when they allowed Highland to shoot the ball at a 75% clip from three-point range on nine-of-12 shooting. The Lady Devils shot 33.3% from the floor and didn’t hit a three in that same time frame.
“We can’t expect to turn it on in the second half and expect to win, we’ve got to play two halves,” said Allen head coach Leslie Crane. “I’m proud of them because they fought back and didn’t take a whooping, but it shouldn’t have been that way from the beginning.”
“It’s a mental thing,” Crane said.
The Lady Red Devils shot free throws at a 58.6% success rate, including 28.6% in the first half.
Allen trailed Highland at halftime, 42-20.
The second half was a different game. The red and black picked up the urgency and made it a one-point game multiple times in the final minutes.
Noa Muranaka, Naomi Smith, Britney Schroer and Clara Romero each forced steals in the second half to help the Lady Devils convert on the other end for easy layups and crawl back into the game. It also helped that Highland’s shooting had gone cold, making only 29.2% from the floor.
“We changed defenses and we full court pressed them,” said Crane. “We forced them into a lot of turnovers, we made it so the only place they could shoot was outside. We played stronger and smarter, the game we should have played all game long.”
Allen picked up the pace offensively as well, knocking down 46.4% of their shots from the floor, going 13-for-28. Romero grabbed a team-high five rebounds and Khamille Warr and Smith each had four.
The Lady Devils capitalized on their missed shots and scored 10 second-chance points.
Smith led Allen offensively with 13 points while Shade Richardson and Britney Schroer each netted 10 points. Schroer hit four-of-eight of her shots from the floor while Richardson went a perfect two-of-two from three-point range.
