VIDEO and STORY BY MATT SIMON
On senior night, Ashlee Lewis scored 17 points as the Long Beach Poly girls basketball team won its 14th consecutive Moore League title defeating Wilson 72-39 Tuesday night at Poly.
Ashley Hawkins and the Bruins didn’t make it easy for the Jackrabbits early on as she scored five of her 16 points in the first quarter as Wilson trailed Poly 19-16 after the first quarter.
“We came out really strong in the first half,” Hawkins said. “Because we beat Lakewood last week and we beat Millikan, so I think we had a lot of confidence going into this and so last time we played against Poly it was close as well at Wilson. I think that’s why we came out confident and strong.”
Poly (23-4) used an 8-point second quarter from Nala Williams to take a 38-31 lead at halftime.
In the second half, the Jackrabbits made some adjustments and held the Bruins (19-8) to only eight points in the second half.
“We came out a little big sluggish,” Poly coach Carl Buggs said. “We knew they were going to come out and get up and down the court. But they were out running us, out hustling us and really beating us in all facets of the game except the score. But that was keeping them in it, so the second half and we adjusted to that and took away their break and stayed a little tighter on their scorers we was able to open the game up.”
While shutting Wilson down, Simone Morris and Lily Buggs got things going offensively scoring 15 and 14 points, respectively
“We started running out of gas in the second half,” Wilson coach Erin Carey said. “I don’t even think that was so much the problem, we just weren’t executing. The first half we were really executing our game plan, running the offenses, setting our plays, head hunting on screens and in the second half we just came out flat.”
Wilson will finish the regular season off against Cabrillo on Thursday and Poly will travel to face Millikan.
