Notre Dame girls roll Saxony Lutheran in battle of SEMO Conference powers

The Notre Dame Bulldogs girls basketball team defeated the Saxony Lutheran Crusaders 66-37 on Thursday at Saxony Lutheran High School. Neveah Lucious led Notre Dame on offense with 17 points, followed by Skylar Craft and Eliza Barnette with 11 and 10, respectively.

Through most of the first quarter, both teams struggled to get the ball in the basket, scoring only from the free-throw line. The Bulldogs closed out the final two minutes on a 6-3 run to take an 11-6 lead into the second quarter.

Lucious and the Saxony Lutheran center Evie Caruso each picked up their third foul and sat most of the second quarter. With both bigs on the bench, each team found the bucket more often but Notre Dame found more of an offensive stride than the Crusaders and built the lead to 11, going into the break up 32-21.

Bulldogs head coach Kirk Boeller said his message to the team at halftime was to calm down offensively and pick it up defensively.

“Saxony had us on our toes, they pressured us and caused a bunch of turnovers. They got in the passing lanes and made us look really bad in the first half,” Boeller said. “So I just told them to calm down, take a deep breath in and pick the intensity up on the defensive side.”

Boeller’s message was well received because the Bulldogs did exactly that, going on an 8-0 run to begin the third with Lucious having six of those. Throughout the rest of the quarter Notre Dame dominated, forcing too many turnovers to count and extending the lead to 25 and carrying a 52-27 lead headed into the final frame.

The Bulldogs continued this through the fourth quarter as they cruised to the victory. Boeller said it was nice to get a win after a tough overtime loss against Doniphan.

“With the way Saxony has been playing lately, they're playing good basketball and we knew that these two back-to-back games were going to be tough,” Boeller said “So to go from last night to tonight, we knew it was going to be difficult, but the girls sucked it up there at the end and competed.”

Saxony Lutheran will host Poplar Bluff on Monday at 7:30 p.m. while Notre Dame will host Dexter also on Monday at 7:30 p.m.