Jackson girls basketball team shakes Notre Dame late

After missing five games with a concussion she sustained in a car accident two weeks ago, Jackson's Cassidi Tomsu was excited to play in her first game back against Notre Dame on Thursday night.

Tomsu quickly found out that missing nearly a week of practices left her out of breathe and out of basketball shape throughout the Indians' 54-40 road victory.

"I was winded, I'll be honest," Tomsu said with a laugh. "It does kill me being out that long. I had maybe three practices before this game, so it was definitely rough on me. But I'm working hard at it to get back to full strength."

The junior said she didn't feel like she played her best, but with her team only up by one point heading into the fourth quarter, Tomsu scored eight points to lead all scorers, and hit six free throws in the final two minutes to help the Indians come away with the win.

"It's always nice to have your leading scorer back. You'd like to have every player if you could. That's an ideal situation," Jackson coach Tyler Abernathy said. "She came off in about the first three minutes of the game and she goes, 'I am dead tired,' I think she wore herself out in warm ups. You're so excited to play and next thing you know you're going through warm ups at 100 miles an hour and the game starts and you're already gassed a little bit.

"She had to fight through that, but she'll get better the more we go along here. We made some free throws, and I know Tomsu made a bunch down the stretch. She's a fantastic free throw shooter. So any time we get the lead and they foul her, we feel really good about the situation. And then we got some stops and made them take a few outside shots, instead of letting them hit layups. They missed them and we rebounded the ball and were kind of able to push it past them."

The teams, tied 9-9 after one quarter, stayed within two points of each other for much of the first half. While Jackson led 25-19 at halftime, the Bulldogs closed the gap to 36-35 by the start of the fourth quarter.

Jackson used an 11-5 run to pull away in the fourth, and held a 47-40 lead with 1 minute, 24 seconds to play. Jackson senior Rachel Crites and junior Autumn Reid each hit 3s in that span.

Notre Dame was held to just eight shots from the field and did not score in the final three minutes of the game.

Tomsu hit buckets from the charity stripe during the Indians' final run, and added four more in the final minute of the game, while sophomore Rylee Stafford netted another.

"I always work on my free throws. Whenever it's a tight game it always comes down to free throws. They've won us some games, and they sure did tonight," Tomsu said.

Notre Dame coach Renee Peters said Tomsu was the last player she wanted her team to foul in the final minutes, but it never quite went the Bulldogs' way.

"In the final two minutes, we're trying to get a deflection or a steal. If it's not there after a couple passes then we had to foul," Peters said. "I finally had to tell my girls, 'Quit fouling Tomsu. She's automatic at the line.' Eventually we did, but it really didn't matter. We've got some 3-point shooters, so when we came down I thought, we weren't going to rely on going to the hoop. We were going to try and hit a 3, press and get it back again. But we go down and turn the ball over and they hit their free throws. It didn't quite go as planned."

Nearly two months after being routed by Jackson 63-22 in the Farmington Tournament, Notre Dame coach Renee Peters said she was happy with the way her team was able to stick with Jackson early in the game.

"The first time we played Jackson, they clocked us up in Farmington," Peters said. "And I know they're a different squad and they're unfortunately injured right now, but you know what? I think we played a little bit more respectably than the first time out. Any time we see improvement with our youth, it's a big step, but their leadership and their experience obviously showed up at the end."

Abernathy said his team started off strong in the first, but didn't finish all of its shots, which kept Notre Dame in the game.

"I thought we came out and did some good things. We didn't finish though," Abernathy said. "We had to have missed four or five layups there in the first ten possessions. So I thought we executed and got what we wanted, I just felt like we didn't finish real well."

Jackson closed out the first half with a 10-2 run.

Notre Dame didn't go down without a fight in the final half. The Bulldogs used a 9-3 run to tie the game with 5:17 left in the third.

Jackson turned the ball over on five of its first 10 second half possessions, and after the fifth one, Notre Dame sophomore Morgan Duschell was fouled driving to the basket on the ensuing possession and sank two free throws to give the Bulldogs a 30-28 lead. Notre Dame junior Cheyenne Sandler scored four points during that stretch, and Brooke Blankenship added five, including a 3.

"That could've been my fault. We switched up defenses. I wanted to throw something at them that was a little bit different," Abernathy said. "They hit a corner 3 and then they got an offensive rebound on the next possession. And so that's just something we've got to look at and see which one we're more comfortable with. We got a turnover the very first possession. So we started out with a positive, and then the next two possessions they made adjustments and started knocking down shots and it kind of got them back in it a little bit."

Jackson regained the lead for good on a 3-pointer by Stafford with 4:01 left in the third quarter.

"Their experience took over, and those are things that we're going to have to learn," Peters said. "A one-point game went to a 14-point game pretty quick. Their leaders hit their shots, and they had the ball in the hands of the girls that were going to hit the shots. They knew what they were doing there."

Jackson 9 16 11 18 -- 54

Notre Dame 9 10 16 5 -- 40

JACKSON (54) -- Cassidi Tomsu 13, Rachel Crites 13, Rylee Stafford 9, Autumn Reid 7, Nikki Sotak 4, McKinzie Scott 3, Nicole Humphreys 3, Madison Eckley 2. FG 16, FT 18-23, F 11 (3-pointers: Crites 1, Scott 1, Reid 1, Stafford 1. Fouled out: none)

NOTRE DAME (40) -- Brooke Blankenship 11, Sam Brennan 9, Lexi Welter 7, Cheyenne Sandler 6, Hayli Chapman 5, Morgan Duschell 2. FG 16, FT 5-8, F 14 (3-pointers: Blakenship 1, Brennan 1, Chapman 1. Fouled out: none)