Lady Cougars Start Slow, Can't Finish

The host Chatham girls' basketball team fell to Columbia 53-44 Tuesday during the Chatham Cougar Classic Holiday Tournament.

Columbia got off to a quick start as it went on a 13-0 run to start the game. Columbia senior forward Marcelyn Williams led the scoring attack with a game-high 19 points.

"We hustled and we were on the boards," Williams said. "We would get second and third chance opportunities and we weren't giving them second opportunities to shoot. That's attributed to our plays and playing good [defense]."

Columbia's Jade Johnson-Walker and Melissa Carelli both posted double figures with 11 points each.

Chatham Head Coach Joe Gaba said the Cougars got caught out of their element trying to slow the tempo early in the game.

"We're too good to spot them a 10-0 lead," he said. "In the first half, we tried to compete with them in terms of running the floor and we got caught up. In the first half, we just needed to slow it down, play a little bit better defense."

The Cougars bounced back in the second half and pulled to within four points with two big three pointers by sophomore guard Amanda Berntsen in the middle of the fourth quarter. Berntsen led the Cougars with 18 points.

Despite the momentum shift, Gaba said the Cougars comeback came too late in the game.

"We held them to 15 points in the second half. It was just a little late to try and beat a team like that," he said.

Gaba said his team will have no trouble bouncing back from the loss and it will help them down the road.

"This is why we invited them into our tournament," he said. "We wanted to play state level competition and I felt like we competed with them. This is a loss to build on based on how well we played from the second quarter all the way through the end of the game."

Chatham senior captain Caroline Murphy said Chatham expected to play a hard-fought game against Columbia, which is No. 18 in the Star Ledger Top 20.

"We knew it was going to be a tough game," she said. "We learned a lot from it, and we have Ramapo, who's also going to be tough, tomorrow. We just have to take it one game at a time, and then we have a couple tough conference games, so it just helped prepare us and show us it's not going to be easy."

The 3-1 Cougars continue their home tournament at 6pm tomorrow at Chatham High School against Ramapo.