Cold shooting Georgetown falls to Amesbury 47-35

(Amesbury MA) Amesbury started in a zone and stayed in a zone defeating Georgetown, 47-35, on Monday night in Cape Ann League play.

If you want to get a team out of a zone, you hit from the outside. The visiting Royals (2-2) only connected from long-range three times and that was not nearly enough to discourage the packed-in Indians (2-1).

Amesbury never trailed and when they put a 16-4 run together an anybody’s game (6-5) got out of reach (22-9) one minute into the second half.

G’Town’s missed three-pointers created long rebounds and Amesbury led by Maddie Napoli were quick to race ahead for layups.

Abbie Sartori (16 points) led all scorers. The AHS junior was on the payoff end of several of the Indians breakaways.

It was a long night for the Royals. The Amesbury zone keyed the passing lanes and harassed Georgetown’s outside shooters. It also seemed that every G’Town possession in close drew at least two defenders.

A telling stat was sixteen Georgetown turnovers in just the first half. Combine cold outside shooting with miscues trying to get inside looks and you can understand the Royals getting only nine points in the first half and behind by eleven.

The Indians had a much better time against the zone used by G’Town. They were able to get the ball into open looks in the corners. There were also some terrific feeds from the corners into Megan Reid (9 points) cutting down the lane.

The Royals closed to within nine points (30-21) after senior Cayla Durkee hit two free throws with three minutes left in the third quarter. But Amesbury answered with a run of seven straight to gain significant separation (37-21). Scorers for the Indians in this segment were Zoe Fitzgerald, Julia LaMontagne, and Abbie Sartori.

Next for Amesbury will be Ipswich at home (6:30PM) on Wednesday.

Next for Georgetown is Hamilton-Wenham at home (6:30PM) on the same night.

Georgetown wanted to full-court press but couldn’t put enough good offense together to get into it.

Amesbury, 8-12 in 2014-15, looks ready to do better than that this season.

Hamilton-Wenham defeated Amesbury 57-53 three days ago by forcing twenty Amesbury turnovers and making eleven three’s. The Indians may have had twenty turnovers versus Georgetown but they weren’t stung from long range.

Good work by the Amesbury student section. Looked to me as if a number of the members of the boys basketball team were on hand. Nice to see that kind of support.

Amesbury boxscore

Georgetown boxscore

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