‘Let’s just bury them’: Third-quarter blitz carries Raiders to lopsided victory over Cardinals

QUINCY — The Quincy Notre Dame girls basketball players decided they had allowed Pleasant Plains to hang around long enough.

So when they went to the locker room at halftime Tuesday night with an eight-point lead, there wasn’t much need for a discussion on how to approach the second half.

The plan was quite simple: Bury ‘em.

“(QND coach Eric) Orne came into the locker room at halftime with that look in his eye,” senior guard Sage Stratton said. “He was like, ‘We have to put them away now.’ We had the momentum. We were doing great on defense. He said, ‘Let’s carry that over to the next half and let’s just bury them.’”

It took about four minutes to dig a hole so deep the Cardinals couldn’t escape.

The Raiders, ranked eighth in Class 3A, used back-to-back 3-pointers from Jenna Durst and Stratton to kickstart an 18-0 run in which they scored on every possession and made seven consecutive field goals. At that point, QND led 43-17 as Pleasant Plains committed turnovers on eight of its first nine possessions of the second half in what was eventually a 53-21 victory for QND at The Pit.

“We’re trying to push the tempo on defense and make sure we kept working hard to control the tempo of the game,” QND point guard Ari Buehler said. “We were ready. We knew what we were doing, and going into this game, we wanted to prove it.”

They proved they could be efficient on both ends of the floor.

The Cardinals (5-5) didn’t score in the third quarter until junior guard Bailey Leach converted on a drive down the left side of the lane with 2:37 to go. It was their only field goal as they were outscored 24-2 in the frame and committed nine turnovers.

Meanwhile, the Raiders (6-0) wnt 9 of 12 from the field and scored on 10 of 14 possessions in the third quarter.

“We were moving the ball really well, going side to side,” Durst said. “Most teams don’t want to play defense for that long, so we got a lot of open threes. We passed the ball really well. We got it to shooters and got it to Tristan (Pieper) on the block. Everybody touched it.”

In fact, the Raiders had assists on eight of their nine field goals in the third quarter.

“We definitely looked for the extra pass, made the extra pass and made sure we slowed it down when we needed to slow it down,” Buehler said. “I feel like we made all the right decisions tonight. They were the smart, right decisions.”

The Raiders made the tough plays as well, limiting the Cardinals to four offensive rebounds and aggressively boxing out Cardinals forward Anna Weber every possession. Weber finished with two rebounds and was held scoreless.

“Tonight the toughness in the first half where we didn’t let Weber get in there and get rebounds was crucial,” Orne said. “We stood strong for a long time and limited her to a lot of different things so her night was tough.”

Meanwhile, Stratton’s night was as smooth as Weber’s was tough.

The Drury University signee went 6 of 10 from 3-point range and finished with a team-high 19 points.

“When I got that ball, I was like, ‘Let’s go. Let’s shoot it,’” Stratton said. “I felt pretty good.”

The payback for a 45-34 loss at Pleasant Plains last season felt pretty good, too.

“It does,” Stratton said. “But we have to keep working.”