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LCA drills Collegiate

Chris Humphreys / Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: February 28, 2008

It was easy to look onto the court and see that Liberty Christian Academy had a considerable size advantage over Collegiate.

But what soon became apparent was that the Bulldogs' speed and quickness would dominate the VIS Division I girls quarterfinal basketball game Thursday.

LCA (26-2) rushed past the Cougars for a dominating 64-42 victory on its way to today's 8:30 p.m. semifinal game at Paul VI High School in Fairfax.

"We get to go to the final four for the first time in the history of this school," Bulldogs guard Felice Lowery said. "We have a lot of seniors on the team and we wanted it pretty bad."

Said first-year LCA coach Buddy Mason: "We played really well and executed the game plan almost to perfection. I couldn't be prouder of the them but we're not quite satisfied yet. We hope we are going to have two more games."

The Bulldogs seemed like mere blurs as they caused 16 turnovers and held Collegiate to 22 points through the first 24 minutes.

The turnovers also led to several easy buckets as LCA built a 51-22 lead going into the fourth quarter.

"I was impressed with (the Bulldogs') speed," Collegiate coach Rives Fleming said. "They really took advantage of our mistakes and opened up the game."

Said Lowery: "We were aggressive. We wanted to win and knew we had to play defense and cause turnovers because we like to run with the ball (on offense) and get fast-break opportunities."

LCA was just as aggressive on the offensive end as the Bulldogs attacked relentlessly, penetrated the Cougars' defense and crashed the boards.

"We really stressed to take it to them in practice," Mason said. "I thought we settled for the outside shot a little too much when we played them in the BRC championship game last Saturday."

LCA had four players score in double digits.

Lowery led the Bulldogs with 16 points, six rebounds, four assists and two steals.

Hanka Musa added 13 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks, Christina Mitchell finished with 11 points, five rebounds, two assists and two steals and Jelena Antic had 10 points, six rebounds, two assists, and two steals.

"We have got a real balance to our team," Mason said. "We get a lot of kudos on our Macedonian girls (Musa and Antic) but we have some other girls that can really play."