<\/p>\n
At halftime of Wednesday’s girls’ basketball game between Poly and Millikan, it seemed like it might be d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu for the upset-happy Rams\u2014despite a poor opening, hot shooting helped them rebound to tie the game at 23 at the intermission. <\/span>But a dominant defensive effort from Poly, plus some knockdown shooting of their own, led the Rabbits to a 62-32 win that keeps them perfect in league.<\/p>\n Poly roared out to an 11-0 lead, the highlight of which was the return of Thaddesia Southall, getting her first minutes since her knee injury, with 1:37 left in the first quarter. <\/span>Southall, in limited action, looked natural and mobile (she said afterwards the knee “felt fine”), and finished with 0 points, four rebounds, and two fouls. <\/span>But, although they didn’t score until there were just 38 seconds left in the quarter, Millikan went on a 9-0 run extending into the second quarter, then went blow for blow with Poly in the second quarter, as some streaky shooting paid off.<\/p>\n Rachel Flores was the hero, going 3\/3 from beyond the arc, but the Rams as a team were an astounding 5\/6 in the first half\u2014even more astounding since they were 2\/10 from inside the arc, many of those misses coming in the paint.<\/p>\n In the second half, Poly’s guards moved up on the Millikan shooters, and didn’t give them any space to get shots off; the Rams were just 1\/7 in the second. <\/span>In general Poly pressured Millikan into a lot of turnovers, and held the Rams to just 9 points in the third and fourth quarters, while exploding for 39 of their own, thanks to hot shooters like leading scorer Brittany Wilson, who finished with 18 on 7\/11 shooting. <\/span>“I think we can be a great shooting team at times,” she said after the game. <\/span>“Once we take our time and set, we can hit ’em as well as any team I’ve seen.” <\/span>Sheila Boykin was the leading rebounder with 8 boards, while Flores led Millikan with 10 points, and Hilary Drinovsky pulled down six boards despite being hampered by an elbow injury sustained against Jordan.<\/p>\n There weren’t many flaws in Poly’s defense in the second half\u2014they only allowed four field goals, they didn’t commit a foul until two minutes into the fourth quarter, and they converted turnovers into easy buckets. <\/span>The only problem, in coach Carl Buggs’ eyes, was that it took until the second half to see it. <\/span>“We’re still not at the defensive level I’d like to be at,” he said. <\/span>“I’m a big fan of thinking that our defense creates our offense.” <\/span>If Poly can play 32 minutes of their second-half defense, that could mean an awful lot of offense.<\/p>\n Millikan will host Cabrillo on Friday, then visit Compton next week to wrap up league play; Poly hosts second-place Jordan on Friday, and will play the Jags and Tarbabes next week. <\/span>They also have a huge game against national top-twenty Whitney Young from Chicago this Saturday evening.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was tied at halftime, but an unbelievable second-half effort led to a 30-point Poly win on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2252"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}