GIRLS BASKETBALL: Hudson rings up victory over Germantown

The Bluehawks (2-4) hadn’t played a game since falling to Coxsackie-Athens on Dec. 19 and were chomping at the bit to get back in action, according to coach Vern Cross. The layoff did give Cross’ young squad to fine tune some things

“A big shout to Coach (E.J.) Jones and Coach (Henry) Haye,” Cross said. “Over the Christmas break they worked really hard with the girls on some fundamental stuff. I’m a really lucky guy two have those two guys on the staff with me. They did a lot of work with the girls and it showed tonight.

“The girls were hungry and were focused. We did get into a little bit of trouble, just getting stagnant with our offense. They did do very well on GVG, that’s our equivalent of man to man, and they also did a lot of good things as a team. We went into the locker room and said that we wanted to keep the core at a certain pace and they kept it right where we wanted to be at.”

The Bluehawks led 21-6 after one quarter of action, 33-10 at halftime and 55-10 through three quarters.

Coach Cross was especially pleased his team was able to limit Germantown to just 14 points.

“It’s really good for us,” Cross said. “We’re a really young program and one of the things we were dealing with was a lot of turnovers, a lot of not being able to recognize who to help on defense and things like that, so we kind of gave the girls a little message and said let’s go out there and play some defense. It’s OK to score, but let’s see if we can put our feet on the ground and see if we can hold them to some points. We came up with a number and we were able to do that, so I’m proud of them.”

Malia Jackson led the Bluehawks with 17 points. Amya Moore added 16 and Olivia Mann had eight.

Adele Heuer topped Germantown with seven points.

“This win means so much to the girls,” Cross said. “Just the hard work that they’ve been putting in, it’s good to be able to see them go out and play a team like this and get a quality win. It’s good for their confidence. One of the things that I wanted them to do was to stay focused when we were up big and I didn’t want them to get sloppy, that’s why we pulled that number and said we don’t want to let them get over this many points.

“We saw a lot of progress today. Olivia Mann played amazing defense. She did all of the things that we worked on over the break. Amya was really good, Gab (Logue) shot well, Malia was Malia and then we were able to get some of our girls in. Sara (Hanley) came in and made two big shots, Aaliyah hit some big shots, Chandrice (Goode) who is a pure shooter and has some really flashy moves and Moriah (Walker) is a ball magnet, Kara (Sullivan) played really well. So we were happy. We were able to get just about every girl into the game, and it’s always good as a coach to make sure your girls are able to get some playing time.”

Hudson plays at Rensselaer and Germantown hosts Albany Leadership on Friday at 6:30 p.m.

HUDSON (65): Mann 4-0-8, Moore 6-3-16, Logue 2-0-6, Hanley 2-0-6, Walker 1-0-2, Goode 1-3-6, Denson 1-1-4, Jackson 7-3-17. Totals 24-10-65.

3-pointers: Logue 2, Hanley 2, Moore, Denson, Goode.

GERMANTOWN (14): B. Anderson 1-0-2, Heuer 3-1-7, K. Anderson 0-1-1, Edwards 1-0-2, Cidras 1-0-2. Totals 6-2-14.