Beachwood Girls' Basketball Produces Another Romp

For the past few weeks, it’s been hard to get a handle on the Beachwood girls’ basketball team.

Are they a dominant team mowing down all opponents who dare challenge them or are they simply the beneficiary of weak competition heading into the meat of district play?

The Lady Bison chalked up another blowout victory, this time throttling Wickliffe, 87-23, on Saturday night at Lakeside High School.

In their last four wins, Beachwood’s average margin of victory is 42.3 points per game.  Perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise as Wickliffe, Independence and Cardinal (whom they’ve played twice in the span) have a combined record of 10-52.

One wonders if boredom and complacency might set in on the Lady Bison, but Beachwood coach Melvin Burke isn’t worried in the least.

“I’m not concerned with easy games, per se. We have hard practices, daily,” Burke said. “It’s just the scheduling. We don’t make the schedule. We have to play the opponents at hand. We’re still going to play to our strengths which are speed, scoring and defense.”

Well, the nights of rollover games will certainly come to an end soon.

The Lady Bison (19-4) will face Gilmour Academy, the district’s top seed and a 70-29 winner over Richmond Heights in Saturday’s nightcap. Thursday’s game time is 7:30 p.m. at Lakeside High School.

The Lancers (20-2) narrowly missed finishing in the final regular-season Associated Press Girls’ Basketball State Poll for Division III. They rank only 10 teams, but if the poll was extended, Gilmour would be 11th.

“They’re a fine team with great size and skill. I have a lot of respect for their coaching staff,” Burke said. “It’ll be a matchup of size, speed, wisdom and skill. We have to make sure we stay out of foul trouble and not get out-rebounded.”

Beachwood demonstrated it has balanced scoring and will certainly need it going forward. Krystal Pearson led the Lady Bison with 19 points, while Mercedes Hudson and Aneisha Hardin each had 17. Mikah Aldridge pitched in with 13.

As is often the case in Beachwood’s games, steals play a big part of their defense which in turn sets up their offense. For the game, the Lady Bison produced 25 takeaways to sap Wickliffe’s will.

The closest the Blue Devils came to reaching 10 points in a quarter came in the second at eight, but it was sandwiched around quarters of four points each for the first and third quarters.

The Lady Bison’s most dominant quarter came in the third when they posted 32 points which included a 21-2 run for the first 5:15. The Blue Devils got their second and only other make of the quarter on a Tanae Ming jumper at 2:45 to break up the Lady Bison’s huge run.

Pearson piled on two three-pointers, and Hudson put back a miss and hit a three-pointer of her own to close out the quarter’s scoring.

Beachwood    22  17 32 16  87

Wickliffe        4    8   4    7   23

Beachwood: Krystal Pearson 19 points, Mercedes Hudson 17, Aneisha Hardin 17, Mikah Aldridge 13, Monique Kaiser 9, Maya Eddie 8, Kyndal Wilson 2, Jaalyn Owens 2.

Wickliffe: Tanae Ming 7 points, Sam Ramkey 5, Michaela Kenny 4, Sarah Nobbe 4, Melanie Hill 2, Lauryn Palgut 1.