East Rockaway rolls past Malverne

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Coming off its first Conference ABC victory after six defeats, East Rockaway’s girls’ basketball team exploded for a season-high 24 first-quarter points Jan. 25 and never looked back on the way to an impressive 71-36 home win over shorthanded Malverne.

Junior Juliet McCarthy scored half of her game-high 24 points from behind the arc and had five assists, junior Brooke DeGiulio had 16 points and eight rebounds, and senior point guard Rachel Graves added 10 points and 10 steals to lead what Lady Rocks head coach Karin Leary said was the team’s most complete effort of the season. Senior Alexis Lake led the Lady Mules with 16 points and 12 rebounds.

“We shot really well in practice yesterday and it carried over into tonight,” Leary said after East Rockaway improved to 6-7 overall. “It was the best we’ve done in our competitive shooting drills and I was hoping it wouldn’t be a jinx. 

“We really did a nice job of not only shooting but sharing the ball,” she added. “They played a lot of man defense and it’s something we’ve been working on a lot.”

Malverne, which suffered a crucial loss recently when senior guard Diana Jean went down with a severe knee injury, slipped to 2-12 overall and remains in search of its first conference win with five games remaining. “It’s been tough,” Malverne head coach Lorenzo Jenkins said. “Losing Diana was a game-changer. She plays aggressively and with a lot of heart.

“We have a lot of young players learning as they go,” he added. “We don’t have the kind of experience most of our opponents have.”

The Lady Mules stayed close in a highly offensive opening quarter before East Rockaway closed on a 9-2 run to build a double-digit lead heading into the second. Sophomore Tyela Davidson scored all four of her points in the first and junior Nia Moore knocked down a trey as Malverne was within 15-12 before DeGiulio and McCarthy sparked the hosts.

McCarthy closed the opening stanza with her first of four three-pointers on the night, sparking a 12-3 run. Junior Emily Chelius opened the second with a basket, and DeGiulio and McCarthy sandwiched treys around one by Malverne eighth-grader Princia Ulysse to make it 32-17.

Lake, who averages 16.2 points per game and scored as many as 28 this season, scored five straight points and seven of the Lady Mules’ next nine but the defense had no answer for McCarthy’s outside accuracy. She hit her third trey of the quarter just before the halftime buzzer to make it 42-26.

East Rockaway removed all the drama with a 10-point run to open the second half. Senior Rachel O’Hagan, junior Kailey Hyland and sophomore Hunter Vertuccio all found the net early in the third quarter as the margin grew to an insurmountable 52-26.

“I’m hoping these last two games boosted confidence and showed the girls how good they can be,” Leary said. 

The first meeting between the teams was postponed Jan. 4 due to snow and rescheduled for Feb. 5 at 7 p.m. at Malverne.