Pressure Cooker
BUTLER TWP — The game started out tight.
It didn’t end that way.
Baldwin trailed Butler 18-16 midway through the second quarter before taking off on a 25-3 run. That spurt led the Highlanders (5-2) to a 55-35 girls basketball win over the Golden Tornado Thursday night in the Butler Christmas Tournament.
By the time the run ended, Baldwin had a 43-21 lead on the shell-shocked Tornado with 3:25 left in the third quarter.
“We got rattled, no doubt about it,” Butler coach Mark Maier said. “I probably should have called a timeout in the second quarter when they opened up the lead.
“That’s a good team and they play hard. They disguise their traps well and they’re effective with it. Sometimes they trap the point guard, sometimes the first pass.
“They applied full-court pressure, backed it up to half-court ... It gave us problems,” Maier added.
Baldwin plays Mohawk Friday night in the Butler gym as part of the tournament’s round-robin format. The Tornado take on Mohawk at 6:30 p.m. Saturday to conclude the tourney.
“That’s what nice about basketball,” Maier said. “In football, you have to wait seven days to get this taste out of your mouth. We have a chance to get rid of it Saturday.”
This is an excerpt — read more about the game in Friday’s Butler Eagle.
