Lady Red hold off Fliers' upset bid

CLYDE — Clyde made Bellevue work for everything it got on Thursday night. The Lady Red, as teams with 13 consecutive league titles do, found a way. But the young Fliers showed that a 14-peat won't be easy for Bellevue. "We definitely had to fight through some adversity," Bellevue junior Audrey Turner said. Bellevue's final margin was 55-43 in a game that Clyde led at halftime and had tied with 30 seconds left in the third quarter. In what's expected to be an intense, competitive SBC Lake Division, it was a crucial one for the Lady Red to pull out, no matter what it looked like. "Our team comes together," Turner said. "In between plays, we talk and communicate… It's a communication thing. We do a really good job at helping each other out and seeing what needs fixed." Hailey Rees led Bellevue (3-1, 1-0) with 18 points. Kaitlyn Turinsky had 10 points, 12 rebounds and five blocks. Turner added 10 points (8-10 FT) and four steals, and freshman point guard Ellie Freitag totaled nine points and six rebounds. "Ellie is a heady player," Santoro said. "She handles the ball really well. Her best is still to come." For Clyde, Katie Shiets had 13 points. Reese Daniel went for 11 points, six rebounds and five blocks, and Aubrey Sengstock added six points and eight rebounds. "We're not afraid," Clyde coach Blayze Behney said. "We're changing our habits. We're not afraid of anyone." The Fliers (2-2, 0-1) came out with big energy and pressured Bellevue all over the floor. A game plan that combined throwing multiple bodies at the 6-foot-3 Turinsky and jumping passing lanes elsewhere forced the Lady Red into 13 first-half turnovers, and Clyde capitalized. The Fliers led 10-4 early on a Shiets 3 with a friendly roll, then 13-7 on another triple, this one by freshman Kenzlie Guhn. Bellevue hung around, but when Daniel blocked a shot to start a transition chance and Shiets drilled a right corner 3 in the final five seconds of the first half, Clyde had a 24-21 lead to take into the locker room. "It was our pace of play, going up and down, we played hard," Behney said. The Lady Red got the game to 28-28 early in the third on a floater and free throw from Freitag, a finish through contact from Rees and a post bucket by Turinsky, and then things got a little unusual. Turner was fouled in the act of shooting and calmly sank her first of two free throws. She missed the second, but an official whistled for a violation and then added on a dead-ball foul call for an additional two shots. "They called 'illegal box out,' that was the term he used," Santoro said. "He explained it to me, but I wasn't complaining… I've never been a part of that." Turner made all three of the ensuing shots at the line for a 32-28 edge. "It felt like I was there for an eternity," Turner said. "... It's definitely a focus thing. I just had to lock in." It was the rare four-point possession. "It was deflating," Behney said. Clyde didn't relent, getting a pair of hoops from Sengstock and a 3 from Daniel, along with a Shiets foul shot, to tie the game 36-36 late in the quarter. "Right now, we're playing soft, and we're turning the ball over at a high rate," Santoro said. "That's something that we've harped on in practice and in the film room, and that's something we've got to get corrected." Freitag set up Brooke Brown for a left corner 3 in the quarter's final half minute, though, to send the Lady Red to the fourth with a 39-36 lead they wouldn't relinquish. "We slowed down a little, found some driving lanes and hit some shots," Santoro said. "... We hit shots in the second half." Rees scored nine of her 18 in the final frame to help Bellevue pull away. "Hailey Rees at the end did what good players do at the end," Behney said. "They get the ball in their hands. They want the ball." It marked the fourth high-intensity game to start the season for Bellevue, which won at Perrysburg, lost at home to Clear Fork by a point and then won earlier this week in Shelby. It won't be the last for a talented, young team that schedules tough and has no plans of giving up its spot atop the league. "After 13 years, we know every game we play is gonna be a championship-type game," Santoro said. "The four games we've played so far have been like tournament-style games where we've got to bring it. To our girls' credit, they've survived." There'll be plenty of lessons learned by both squads from Thursday night. Clyde saw that it can play with a team that, in recent years, it really hasn't. "We're not going into a game defeating ourselves," Behney said. "We're ready to go… Give credit to Bellevue. They're a good team. They're well-coached. They know how to win, and that's something we're learning to do still." Bellevue, which improved to 13-0 since the SBC Lake's inception against its Route 20 rivals, saw that too many turnovers and some rushed shots can cause problems. The Lady Red don't take this league title streak for granted, and after Thursday night, they certainly will only want to hold on even tighter. "We definitely didn't play to our full potential," Turner said. "We know that we can play a lot better than this. We're not satisfied with how we played." BELLEVUE Ellie Freitag 3 2-4 9, Brooke Brown 1 0-0 3, Hailey Rees 5 6-7 18, Audrey Turner 1 8-10 10, Kyra Henney 2 0-0 5, Kaitlyn Turinsky 4 2-4 10. TOTALS 16 18-25 55 CLYDE Addie Townsley 1 0-0 2, Reese Daniel 4 0-0 11, Katie Shiets 4 3-4 13, Kenzlie Guhn 1 2-2 5, Cora Liskai 2 2-4 6, Aubrey Sengstock 3 0-0 6. TOTALS 15 7-12 43 Bellevue 11 10 18 16 — 55Clyde 15 9 12 7 — 43 3-point goals — Bellevue 5 (Rees 2, Brown 1, Freitag 1, Henney 1); Clyde 6 (Daniel 3, Sheets 2, Guhn 1)