Lady Hawks snap five-game skid against HTC

DONNELLSON — Taylor Hickey wrote a message to her players on how they were going to beat Holy Trinity on Friday night.
Then Central Lee went out and followed those instructions perfectly.
The Hawks shut down the Crusaders, taking a 37-23 win in a Southeast Iowa Super Conference South Division game.
“I'm going to go back to our defense,” Hickey said. “I mean, truly, that was written on the board tonight. If we play all out defense, we'll win this game. I thought tonight, what totally did it for us was our defense.”
The Hawks (6-5 overall, 5-3 division) held the Crusaders (8-2, 6-2) to 10 second-half points, and eight of those came in the final four minutes.
Central Lee was playing the exact defense Holy Trinity wanted, yet the Crusaders couldn’t capitalize.
“We hoped they would play us in a (man-to-man defense),” Holy Trinity coach Shawn Hopper said. “You want players that want to fight, and tonight our girls didn’t seem to want to do that at all. They didn’t want to get the ball down the court.
“Pretty disappointed in our effort. But definitely some of the blame has to be on me, too. I obviously didn't have them ready.”

The Crusaders were coming off a 69-42 loss to Mediapolis on Tuesday in a battle for the division lead. Hopper was curious how his team would respond.
“We get our first loss at Mepo,” he said. “And I figured this was going to go one of two ways. We're going to come out ready to thump somebody, or we were going to be licking our wounds a little bit, and apparently we're still licking our wounds.”
Central Lee hit the Crusaders with six consecutive points to open the game, and it took Holy Trinity almost four minutes before it got its first points.
The Crusaders were within 12-9 with 5:43 left in the second quarter, then Central Lee went on a 25-8 run that lasted until late in the fourth quarter.
Kenna Sandoval led Central Lee with 10 points. Sydnie Larson and Lizzy Mason each had eight points.
Teagan Snaadt led Holy Trinity with eight points.
Central Lee snapped a five-game losing streak to Holy Trinity.
“Finally, right?” Hickey said. “I mean, I’m truly proud of them. I've had games where I reflect after, and I just hurt for the girls, because we don't show the two hours basically every day that we're putting in practice out in some of our games, and a lot of that is confidence.
“Tonight the girls, they were all flat out playing as hard as they could. Whoever was on the court, they were truly giving it all. There was no rest time. You can see it in their faces. They were gassed, but, but they weren't going to fold.”