Booth, Brown lead Edison past St. Paul

NORWALK — The killer B's came through. For three-plus quarters, the Edison girls basketball team couldn't put away host St. Paul. That looked especially true when St. Paul senior Morgan Endsley scored twice in the Edison backcourt in just nine seconds to give her team a 45-44 lead with 6:31 left in Thursday's non-league game. But out of a timeout, the Chargers reset and rode the hot hand of Ella Booth and Stella Brown to victory. Edison went on a 12-0 scoring run while holding the Flyers scoreless for exactly six minutes of the eight-minute fourth quarter in the 57-47 win inside Harvey Keller Gymnasium. The Chargers improved to 6-9 with the win by forcing six St. Paul turnovers in the fourth quarter, the highest number of the four quarters. "I think we just got back to how we play," Edison head coach Chelsey Meagrow said. "Sometimes we tend to play safe, and we're not a safe type of defense. We like to be aggressive and pressure the ball and kind of create chaos." Back-to-back baskets from Brown and Jade Ziegelhofer gave Edison a 48-45 lead with 4:53 remaining. Booth then scored inside off a turnover with 4:31 left, then she was fouled and made both free throws with 3:38 remaining to push the lead to 52-45. Another steal and score, this time by Taylor Moore, put Edison in control at 54-45 with 1:59 remaining. "We don't have to do too much, but we want to do enough that they make a mistake," Meagrow said. "We did a nice job with that in the fourth quarter. "Stella was huge with some runouts, and it really shifted the momentum, but scoring when you're also holding them scoreless was a big deal." St. Paul was just 1-of-10 shooting in the fourth quarter after Endsley's two quick baskets. That made shot came with just 30.5 seconds left in the game from Raeleigh Friend. "We didn't make shots. We had some pretty decent looks at times, but we turned it over at bad times," St. Paul head coach Steve Frazee said. "We kept preaching that we needed to get back on defense, but they kept getting run out after run out against us late. "That was what really did us in, and we could not respond. We're trying to play in the half court, and they're defending us pretty well. They made it difficult on us." St. Paul led 16-12 after one quarter, and the game was tied at 28 at halftime. The Chargers then took a 44-39 lead into the fourth quarter before the Flyers got a basket from Ella Kalizewski, followed by the two scores from Endsley. Edison led 25-20 after a 9-0 run in the second quarter was capped by a three-point play from Brooke Dickman with 2:57 left in the first half. However, the Flyers responded with eight of the final 11 points of the half to tie up the game. Trailing 28-24 in the final 90 seconds, Endsley split a pair of foul shots, then banked in a 3 with 59.7 seconds left to tie the score. But Brown and Booth proved too much in the end. Brown scored a game-high 22 points on 8-of-13 shooting and also had seven steals and three assists. "Stella is a special kid who plays basketball the way you want to see it played," Meagrow said. "She has a motor that doesn't quit and will do anything for her team. She puts her body on the floor. "You can probably find her skin out here somewhere tonight. She's going against bigger girls to get rebounds; she gets knocked to the ground to get to the foul line … it doesn't matter, she's going to do it for her team." Meanwhile, Booth finished with 19 points on 6-of-10 shooting and grabbed 18 rebounds on a night where she already had a double-double by halftime. "Ella just loves the physicality of basketball, which is not something that is heard of as much anymore," Meagrow said. "She works hard. It's not that she's just getting rebounds. She is outworking people for the basketball. "She works for position, and she has good footwork, which is also something she's worked at very hard over the years. It's great to see her be successful." Frazee admitted the two Edison standouts were too much for his team. "They were good, and we knew that coming in," he said. "They were as advertised, and give them credit, because they stayed after it and really stuck it to us. They kept coming at us." Endsley scored 16 points for St. Paul, while Friend added 12. Aubrie Bogard finished with seven points and five rebounds. The schedule gets no easier for St. Paul (9-8), as the Flyers face the top two teams in the Firelands Conference when they visit New London (13-3, 8-0) on Saturday and host Mapleton (13-3, 8-1) next Wednesday. "We tried to do a lighter week with three games and the sickness that's gone through the team, but it's no excuse because everyone is going through that," Frazee said. "If we can't play defense, we're going to have a hard time the rest of the year. "We can't be that way. We have to defend. We're not a team that is going to score 50 points per game. We work on defense all the time, but it's not translating to the games so far this week." EDISON (6-9) Taylor More 4-1—10; Jade Ziegelhofer 1-0—2; Ella Booth 6-7—19; Stella Brown 8-6—22; Brooke Dickman 1-1—3; Peyton Taylor 0-1—1. TOTALS 17-16—57. ST. PAUL (9-8) Georgia Crabbs 2-2—6; Morgan Endsley 5-5—16; Raeleigh Friend 5-0—12; Annie Friend 1-0—2; Aubrie Bogard 3-1—7; Ella Kalizewski 1-0—2; Deanna Vazquez 1-0—2. TOTALS 17-8—47. Edison 12 16 16 13 — 57 St. Paul 16 12 11 8 — 47 3-point FGs: (E) Moore; (SP) R. Friend 2, Endsley.