Zohar Catran led all scorers with 16 points for Cresskill, which picked up its seventh win of the season on Tuesday against Eastern Christian.
CRESSKILL - Cresskill jumped out to a 10-2 lead and fought off a pesky Eastern Christian team to earn a 43-37 win on Tuesday afternoon.
"Our defense is really what carried us through this game," said sophomore Zohar Catran. "From defense we got transition points and we just kept it going from there. It all started with our defense."
"They're a great team," Cresskill coach Cory Leeds said of the Eagles. "Our girls played hard and the message was try and dominate every possession and I think we got the better of them. [Senior] Aya [Catran] did a great job on their best player (junior guard Addie Fleming). Our mentality was if we can shut her down and score our points we can be successful."
Eastern Christian took its first lead of the game with an 10-0 run to close out the first quarter and open the second . Senior guard Caroline Pringle hit a jumper with 20 seconds left in quarter No. 1 and senior guard Hannah Leegwater added a pair of buckets in the first minute of the second. Then Fleming canned a pair of free throws and Pringle drove and scored to give the Eagles a 14-12 lead.
Zohar Catran tallied two foul shots to tie the game but Pringle flew coast-to-coast for a layup and Eastern Christian regained the lead, 16-14. A jumper by Catran tied the score and later she drained a 3-pointer to give Cresskill the lead for good, 19-16.
In the third quarter the Cougars stepped up their defense enabling them to take their biggest lead of the game, 29-17, on a drive to the basket by sophomore Hannah Hermann.
The Eagles fought back, however, as Fleming tallied twice, sandwiched around a jumper by sophomore forward Audrey Heerema to cut the lead in half, 29-23, midway through the 3rd quarter.
Later, with a 7-0 run early in the fourth quarter, including a long 3-pointer by Fleming, the Eagles cut the lead to 37-35, but that was as close as they could get as Cresskill closed out the game with a 6-2 run.
"These girls fight, they always do, no matter what the score is - they continue to fight," said Eastern Christian head coach Erik Olson. "But Cresskill moved the ball well, made some great passes to the girls and hit some big shots. At the end of the day that's what [you need to do]. You have to make layups; you have to make foul shots."
Cresskill is a very young team with only two seniors, Aya Catran and Charley Quinn, but the younger players appear to be meshing well into a program short on numbers but long on winning tradition.
"I think they're doing great," Quinn said, "especially coming in with a new coach and not having as many girls [on the roster]. Being able to adapt to all these new plays and a new coaching staff. Everybody is doing great, we're trying our best, working together. And we're all good friends and that helps. We have been struggling on defense at times - depending on the team - and not having height has affected us. But our best defenders, Aya and Zohar, are coming together with their blocks and giving us momentum on defense."
The game was a matchup of two first-year coaches. Leeds has taken over for longtime head coach Mike McCourt, who retired from teaching last June. Leeds is familiar with many of his players as he coached them when they played for the Cresskill middle school team. He said he has enjoyed watching them progress through their high school years and now he gets a chance to coach them again.
Olson retired from the Bergenfield School District last June and took a teaching position at Eastern Christian at the start of this school year. While at Bergenfield he was a star player on the boys basketball team and later he returned to BHS to become the head coach of the girls basketball team before stepping down in 2012.
He was asked about his move to Eastern Christian.
"I love it," he said. "I loved coming here (to Eastern Christian). I had no plans of coaching again. When I got the job at EC I took some time, talked to my wife, prayed about it, and some doors opened. It was meant to be.The game hasn't changed. I'm still learning about the girls. I've only been here two months. I'm still learning what works, what doesn't work. I'm trying to develop a philosophy and a culture of wanting to win, expecting to win and performing at a high level."
Zohar Catran led all scorers with 16 points, Hermann added 9 and Quinn chipped in with 7. Pringle led the Eagles with 13 and Fleming added 12. Cresskill improved to 7-10 while Eastern Christian fell to 8-5.
"We are a very young team but we're all really good friends, we're like sisters," Zohar Catran said. "So it's really easy to play with each other - we have a lot of chemistry and good bonds together. We've lost some winnable games but we need to carry on from here."
"Overall we're a good defensive team," said Olson. "We still struggle offensively. If we're not creating something or if someone is not on we have trouble scoring points. We have to figure out how to correct some of these things. This is the season - there are peaks and valleys. We lost the first three, won eight in a row and now we've lost two in a row."
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