Second-ranked Crestwood outscored Bondurant-Farrar 35-22 in the scond half of a game that was tied at halftime and went on to a 54-41 win in the opening game of the class 3A quarterfinals of the girls’ state tournament. Crestwood coach, Doug Sickels, says they had some trouble getting back up to game speed to start the game. “It was 10 days since our last game and sometimes when you are in practice you are just not as sharp, and to get back into game speed took us awhile. I thought in the first half Bondurant was quicker to the ball than us,” Sickels says.
Sickels says they got the offense going by going back to basics. “We’ve always hung our hat on defense and we always preach defense wins games,” Sickels says. He says they usually play man-to-man defense and tried a little zone until Bondurant hit a three and they went back to the man defense.
Crestwood’s Savanah Lentz had 15 points and was three for 6 from three point range. She says once she hit the first wide-open three, she kept shooting. Lentz says hitting some shots gave them confidence.
“We started hitting our shots better, and we took care of the ball, that’s what we needed to do,” Lentz says. Madison Sickels also had 15 points for the Cadets.
Bondurant-Farrar senior Lexi Atzen says Crestwood found a little more offense. “They had a couple more runs than us and we couldn’t recover after the last run,” Atzen says. Atzen was on three state tournament teams and is glad she got to end her career in des Moines. “It means the world to me, I would have liked to have gone a little bit farther this year,” Atzen says. But she says getting to go to state three times with different teams was “really fun.”
Bondurant Farrar ends the season at 19-6. Crestwood moves on to the semifinals Thursday at 3:15.