Tipp girls win District title
If there ever was a question how strong the Dayton area is for girls basketball in Division Three, that was answered last Saturday. Carroll and Bellbrook destroyed their opponents over at Springfield. CJ and Tipp had tougher battles.
After CJ knocked off Hamilton Badin by four. The Red Devils jumped out to a lead midway through the opening quarter, and withstood anything Western Brown had to offer, rolling to a 52-35 victory at Lakota West. All four teams advanced to last night’s regional semis at Lakota East.
“It was a great win, we’ve got girls that are winners,” Tipp coach Brett Kopp said. “They were determined to do whatever it took to win. They knew coming in, Western Brown was a high powered offense. We had a good few days of prep, and they really got after it defensively.”
Western Brown was the #1 seed out of Cincinnati, but the Red Devils used a three from Mady Turner with 3:30 left in the opening quarter to take the 5-2 lead. And, they never lost the lead again.
Turner came right back and nailed another three at the 3:00 mark to push the Tipp lead to four. From there, the Tipp defense only allowed Western Brown two points over the final 3:13 minutes.
Tipp’s defense shined all night, holding the all-Ohio candidate J. Jenike scoreless for most of the game as she finally got on the board in the third. Averaging over 17 points per game, she was held to five on the day.
“There was Savannah Clawson,” Kopp said. “Her length really gave her trouble. We did some different things on ball screens and dribble handoffs to get her out of rhythm. We knew she wanted to pull up when going left and get to the rim when she was going right. The girls knew what they wanted to do, and they executed what we wanted to do to them.”
Western Brown opened the second with a score in the first 90 seconds, but Abbi Mader scored five points in the next minute to push the Tipp lead to 17-9.
Clawson, who also had a very offensively productive game, knocked down a three at 5:00, but the Tipp offense went silent for the final five minutes of the half, only connecting on a free throw. Fortunately, Western Brown could not take advantage of it as their offense was stymied all night. They only scored five points in that five minute span. Nobody could find the net the final 2:30 as Tipp went into the half leading 21-14.
It was back and forth in the third as neither team could gain the momentum. Tipp did push the lead to 12, thanks to five from Mader and a big three from Morgan Sessons. But, Western Brown battled back and outscored Tipp 8-1 in less than two minutes before the Red Devils closed the quarter with Mader dropping four points. Tipp led 36-27 heading to the fourth.
Before Western Brown knew what hit them, Tipp had built a 49-30 lead with 3:40 left behind Clawson and Sessions each with four. The game was wrapped up in the final three minutes with not much scoring and a net cutting ceremony for the Red Devils.
Mader led Tipp with 17 points, Clawson added 11, while Hiser scored nine and Turner eight.
The Red Devils played Chaminade Julienne last night, with the winner coming back Saturday morning at 11 at Lakota East.
“We needed to make sure we took great shots, not just the first available shot. We had a lot of girls gain some confidence in those five games Abbi missed, and now they are playing with that confidence with Abbi on the floor. When we are balanced like that, it shows how well we move the ball and find the open girl.”
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