SHELBY — The Ashland girls basketball team started Saturday’s clash with Bellevue in decent shape.
The Arrows trailed the powerful Redmen 9-6 and were hanging tough. Then the roof collapsed in an awesome surge.
Coach Kory Santoro’s team ripped off a startling 16-0 blitz to finish the first quarter on top 25-6. The spree continued into the start of the second period and when the barrage of 23 unanswered points ended, the result was never in doubt.
Bellevue coasted home with a 63-42 victory at Shelby High School.
“They’re a very good team and they just got so hot and shot the ball so well,” Ashland coach Jason Snow said. “It went from 9-6 to 32-6 just like that.”
Bellevue’s balanced offense featured four players in double figures. Senior captain Jenna Strayer led the way with 13 points, while senior Val Scheiber added 12, sophomore Payton Vogel chipped in 11 and freshman Casey Santoro added 10.
“We’ve had a very balanced team this year, we have that type of talent,” Redmen coach Kory Santoro said.
Bellevue (4-1) rolled into the half with a 42-12 advantage.
“I thought we dropped our heads a little bit there in the second quarter,” Snow said. “Our motivation was to come out and play hard in the last two quarters. We wanted to pick it up and run our offense.
“We stopped settling for threes and attacked the basket.”
Ashland (1-5) outscored Bellevue 15-11 in the third quarter and 15-10 in the final eight minutes. But it was too little, too late.
“We want to play four quarters,” coach Santoro said. “We’ve gotten up big and then relaxed. I thought we lost our focus in the second half tonight. That’s something we’ll work on in practice.”
Bellevue returns to action later this week against Sandusky Perkins. Ashland faces Mount Vernon on Tuesday.
