Eagles and Lady Eagles suffer tough losses

MORGAN CITY — It just wasn’t a good night for the Vermilion Catholic Lady Eagles Friday in a marquee matchup with Central Catholic.

While the Lady Eagles, ranked No. 3 in the latest unofficial Louisiana High School Athletic Association power rankings, stopped the bleeding from an early first quarter charge by Central Catholic, they couldn’t keep the home standing squad and top
ranked team in Class 1A down as Central Catholic pulled away for a 53-35 victory.

The loss snapped a seven-game winning streak for Vermilion Catholic (17-3 overall, 3-1 in District 7-A action).

“Not to take anything away from Central Catholic because they’re a good ball club, but we just didn’t play well tonight,” Guidry said. “Now whether that’s CC that did that to us or we did that to ourselves, it was not one of our better nights.”

Guidry noted that when Vermilion Catholic would begin to trim into the lead, Central Catholic would extend it again with points off turnovers.

Although Central Catholic (15-2, 3-0 in district) jumped out to as much as a 14-4 lead to begin the game prompting Guidry to call timeout with 4:39 remaining in the first quarter, the Lady Eagles clawed their way back into the contest with a 8-0 run capped
by Katie Frith’s putback to cut the deficit to 14-12 still in the first quarter.

That was as close as Vermilion Catholic would get for the remainder of the contest as it was plagued with turnovers in the second quarter, which prevented them from consistently trying to score.

Central Catholic took advantage using a 20-6 advantage to take a 36-18 lead into halftime.

“That was the difference between the first time we got the lead, and they crawled back and the second time (Central Catholic got a big lead),” Central Catholic coach Jamarr Garrett said. “The second time we did exactly what we talked about, and that’s
putting them away.”

While both teams’ offenses didn’t do much in the second half with each scoring 17 points apiece, even Guidry didn’t appear too happy with her squad’s defense.

“I don’t even know if we did that that well,” she said.

Simply put, she said Vermilion Catholic needs to regroup and fix some things.

“The whole thing is we get to improve,” she said. “It’s just January and things don’t start clicking till the third week of February, so we just got some things to work on.”

Although Central Catholic ( clamped down on defense, limiting Vermilion Catholic to multiple one-shot possessions, Vermilion Catholic still got good looks at the basket in the third quarter.

However, the shots just didn’t go in as the squad was limited to just two buckets by Kaylen Collins, and as a team, went 0-5 from the free throw line.

Garrett called the win “an overall team effort, team win,” noting this team followed the game plan of pressuring Vermilion Catholic’s point guard as well as defending the post when they tried to work the ball inside.

In the fourth quarter, Vermilion Catholic had a little more success, scoring 13 points.

Frith and Collins each reached double figures with 12 and 11 points, respectively, while Kelly White scored six.

Central Catholic was led by its duo of Meo Knight and Randi Brown, who scored 21 points and 18, respectively. Knight, a women’s basketball signee for the University of Alabama, also had eight rebounds, five steals, three assists, and one block, while
Brown had 10 rebounds, four assists, five steals and one block.

Both teams will meet again on Feb. 4 in Abbeville.

Central Catholic...68
VC.............................28

Shay Laporte led Vermilion Catholic with 14 points, while Ethan Menard and Mike Campbell had four points each and William Noegel had three.

Score By Quarter:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th
CCHS
16 19 20 13
VC
7 6 5 10

Geoff Stoute
Daily Review

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