The Helias Lady Crusaders played two distinctly different halves Thursday afternoon, but executed well enough in both of them that it paid off with a victory.
In the first half of a loser's bracket semifinal with Alton (Ill.) in the State Farm Holiday Hoops Invitational, the Lady Crusaders rode a high-octane offense to a lead.
Then in the second half, Helias played to a standstill in a ground-it-out defensive battle where points were hard to come by.
The combination added up to a Helias win by the score of 56-41 at Rackers Fieldhouse.
"Overall, you've got to be pleased, because it's a win," Helias coach Alan Lepper said.
Helias connected on 10-of-15 shots in a back-and-forth first quarter, racing out to a 23-12 lead. Lauren Alexander had the hot hand in the frame, connecting on all of her shot attempts. She was 4-of-4 on 2-point attempts, hit her only try from 3-point range and made her lone free-throw attempt to score 12 points.
The Lady Crusaders kept their foot on the gas in the second quarter, outscoring Alton 16-12 to take a 39-24 edge into the locker room.
Helias made most of its noise in the half by attacking the basket, as post players Ellie Rockers and Erin Wyrick kept slashing through the paint on their way to scores. Rockers scored all of her 13 points in the opening half, while Wyrick had nine of her 11 points in the first 16 minutes of play.
"We're not a big back-to-the-basket type of ball team, but I do like to score in the paint," Lepper said. "We have worked in the last week on getting hard cuts to the basket. If you look at (Rockers and Wyrick) coming up through the ranks, through their grade-school days, they were guards. So that is their forte, facing up and going to the basket."
The third quarter was the polar opposite of the first half, as the defenses stepped up. But Helias still had the better of play, outscoring Alton 9-4 to lead 48-28.
"One thing I was disappointed in was you can't let that happen, failing to keep attacking," Lepper said. "You've got to keep your foot on the throttle. In timeouts, that's what we talked about."
Helias took its biggest lead of the game at 54-30 with 4:41 left to play when Alexander canned two free throws for the last of her game-high 20 points.
Alton made a late charge against the Helias reserves, but never really made a game of it.
Despite forcing 27 Alton turnovers, Lepper said Helias could have been better.
"I still don't think our defense is where it needs to be," he said. "(Alton) shouldn't have scored that many points against us. Yeah, they did throw some stuff up and it went in, but that's going to happen. We still have to have kids buy in to defense 24-7."
The Lady Crusaders, meanwhile, committed 16 turnovers of their own.
"That's too many," Lepper said. "We're just a little out of sync yet. We had so many injuries early and kids coming in who were new. The timing is off just a little bit. I see it getting better in the last couple weeks and hopefully by districts it's there. We're just going to have to get out there and play together a little more."
Helias will play Eureka at 4 p.m. today for fifth place in the event.
"They've got a little size on us, so they'll probably try to go to two low posts and that will probably give us a little bit of issues," Lepper said. "But with Ellie and Erin being volleyball players, they play taller than what they are."