The Londonderry High girls’ basketball squad played a pair of games in the inaugural Pinkerton Academy Girls’ Basketball Christmas Tournament last week, with the second performance being considerably better than the first but both winding up as double-digit victories.
The Lady Lancers snagged a sloppy, 54-41 victory against the Pelham High Lady Pythons in game one of the tourney on Monday, Dec. 28, then had a trip to the Red Claw Holiday Tournament in Portland, Maine. cancelled by the first snowstorm of the winter the next day. But the LHS crew then returned to Derry for its second game of the Pinkerton tourney the next afternoon.
In that second game, coach Nick Theos’ Lady Lancers put forth a far stronger performance than they had two days earlier and strode away from Pinkerton’s Hackler Gymnasium with a pleasing 55-30 trouncing of Windham.
Londonderry, which went a strong 3-1 in its first four Division I games of the 2015-16 campaign, had very little trouble with Windham’s young women from the start of the tourney contest and grasped a 27-point lead after three quarters had been completed.
The Lady Lancers sprinted out to an 11-2 lead during the first 3:39 of the game, with their offenses facing little resistance. And Theos watched his charges outscore Windham by an 8-4 tally during the remainder of the period to grasp a 19-6 lead after one stanza.
Windham attempted eight shots from the floor during quarter one and missed every one of them.
The Lady Lancers outscored their opponents by an 18-11 margin during the second period, with the locals confounding and frustrating Windham with full-court pressure and trapping that paid off with turnovers or steals every time the Lady Jaguars attempted to move the ball up the court.
Londonderry already had Kelsey Coffey and Kate Balcom with double digits in points and Jackie Luckhardt nearly there by halftime. And the locals would double up on their opponents where points were concerned in the third quarter (14-7) to grasp a commanding, 51-24 lead rolling into the final period.
Luckhardt finished with 15 points, Coffey snared 14, Balcom netted 10, and Kat Wells was good for eight as the Lady Lancers rolled.
The Londonderry High girls’ next home contest will be played this Friday evening, Jan. 8 against a struggling Concord High crew which as of press time had yet to win a D-I game and was 0-4 on the young campaign.