Empire League Girls’ Basketball : Cypress Uses Defense to Get Past Esperanza

Stacey Kosaka scored 13 points and Aimee Tanos added 12 points as Cypress High School scored a 49-38 victory over Esperanza Thursday in the Empire League girls’ basketball opener for both teams at Cypress.

The Centurions (11-5) led, 8-4, after a quarter, but the Aztecs (5-9) narrowed the lead to 16-15 with 3:32 left before halftime. Cypress used a 2-3 zone to shut down Esperanza in the final minutes, 12-2, to take a 28-17 halftime lead.

Erika Manning, who scored 8 of her 10 points in the second quarter, also had 12 rebounds.

Jennifer Harney, who scored 11 of her team’s 13 second-quarter points, finished with 24 points and 12 rebounds.

“We got a little careless with the ball and turned it over,” Esperanza Coach Marc Hill said. “They hurt us with their zone in the second quarter, and we were very tentative on our shooting. We played them on even terms for most of the game, but that second-quarter spurt killed us.”

While Cypress finished the first half making 10 of 19 shots, the zone forced Esperanza to connect on only 8 of 27 shots.

“Defense is what won the game for us tonight,” said Norma Leibfreid, Cypress coach. “We were able to slow down Jennifer some late in the second quarter, and when the other (Esperanza) players had to take shots, they rushed them and wound up missing them.”

Esperanza got its only lead with 6:23 left in the first quarter when Harney made a free-throw line jumper to put the Aztecs ahead, 2-1. After Kosaka gave the Centurions a 3-2 lead with a short jumper with 3:15 remaining, Cypress led by as much as 8-2 in the period before the Aztecs narrowed the lead to 4 points.

With Manning scoring 6 of her points in the first 3 minutes of the second quarter, Cypress extended its lead to 14-8. But Harney countered by scoring 5 points in a 1 1/2 minutes to narrow the Cypress lead to 16-15.

Tanos scored 6 of her points in the third quarter as Cypress outscored Esperanza, 14-10, during that span to take a 42-27 lead at the end of the quarter.

The Centurions led twice by 16 points in the fourth quarter.