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Last Wednesday night’s matchup between the girls’ basketball teams of Patrick Henry and No. 5 Atlee was expected to be a barn-burner. Both squads came into the contest with a single loss. Both teams had three players ranked among their respective district’s top-13 scorers. But more importantly, Atlee’s loss came at the hands of Deep Run; a team that Patrick Henry defeated. 

  Therefore, the Raiders expected to be pushed by the Patriots team that has been transformed by Coach Leslie Nuckols who is in her first year back with the team after a three year hiatus.

  “I told them this is a different Patrick Henry team than it has been in the past,” Atlee head coach Anna Prillaman told her players.

  Atlee junior Britt Hill agreed. “They’ve gotten a lot better so we were ready for a competitive game,” she said. “That’s why we tried to come out and play really hard, intense and with a lot of passion.”

  Though both teams played hard, the host Raiders over-whelmed the short-handed Patriots who lost guard Jasmine Smith to injury in the first quarter. As a result, Atlee ran away with a 78-40 win in nondistrict play.

  The offensive explosion by Atlee was largely attributed to Hill breaking out of her early season scoring slump. Ironically, even in a draught, Hill entered the game with a 13.0 ppg average ranking her seventh in the Capital District. But against Patrick Henry she nearly surpassed that mark in the first quarter, when she scored seven of her game high 26 points.

  “Britt was due,” Prillaman said. “I don’t feel that she’s played up to her potential this year and she did tonight.”

  For Hill, it was simply a matter of feeling it. “I was in the zone,” she said. “I haven’t been playing my best lately so it’s good to finally break out of the slump and start playing well.”

  Yet, Hill’s damage to the Patriots was not only in the scoring column. She finished the game with seven rebounds and seven assists not to mention several deflections as she tenaciously harassed the Patrick Henry offense all night.

  However, it was not only Hill that was on a roll. The entire Atlee offense clicked better than it had all season. The Raiders concentrated on ball movement and shot selection making it a primary goal to set up shots for their teammates. As a team, Atlee finished with 23 assists and only six turnovers.

  “I’ve been concerned about the flow of our offense since that game (against Hanover) and the Deep Run game,” Prillaman said. As a result, Atlee implemented an additional man offense and worked on speeding up their zone offense through passing.

  “Definitely the flow is a lot better and I’m lucky I have unselfish players who aren’t concerned about stats as much as getting the ball in the basket as a team,” Prillaman said. Sydney Henderson led Atlee with eight assists to go along with nine points and seven rebounds while her sister Taylor Henderson notched 14 points and Richelle Price added a dozen to the count.

  Despite the final margin of the score, Patrick Henry looked as if it was going to control the game early. The Patriots jumped out to a 4-0 lead less than a minute into the game off jumpers from Jasmine Smith and Katie Anderson. But the Pats only scored five points over the remainder of the quarter and 14 over the rest of the half.

  At the 6:45 mark of the first,  Atlee got on the board with a three from Taylor Ashcraft. Forty-five seconds later, Hill got in the scoring column with her first three of the night. Price then added a pair on free throws and Atlee had doubled up Patrick Henry 8-4 by the 5:18 mark.

  Patrick Henry tried to force the ball inside but on the night tall, lanky center Gracie Schmitt was blocked several times by Price who did a good job of shutting down the interior game of the Patriots. However, Schmitt finally found the basket on an inside shot to trim into the Raiders’ lead.

  But a jumper from Taylor Henderson preceded a three for Sydney and Atlee had once again doubled the margin, 12-6.

  Even though Patrick Henry had fallen behind, they suffered a bigger blow when Smith was hurt while going for a rebound with 3:57 left in the first. Smith left the game not to return and spent the rest of the evening on the bench with ice on her knee.

  Because they ran a four-guard rotation, Patrick Henry was especially hampered by the loss of Smith. “It hurt us tremendously,” Nuckols said. “We have a four guard rotation and you loose one of them that leaves you with three guards.”

  By the end of the game, the Patriots’ remaining guards were worn down by the intense Atlee defense. “They were really tired and it showed,” Nuckols said. “I don’t know how much we were down when (Smith) got hurt but it definitely, definitely made a difference.”

  After Smith left the game, Atlee ran off 13 straight points over a two minute span to take a 23-6 lead and there was still two minutes left in the first period.

  Patriots’ leading scorer Taylor Huber finally scored her first basket with 1:09 left in the quarter. Huber came into the contest leading the Colonial District in scoring at 22.3 ppg. but the Atlee defense cut that margin in half, holding Huber to 11 points in the game.

  Atlee led by 16 (25-9) at the end of the first and by halftime they were ahead 46-18 with 17 points coming from Hill.

  Though Patrick Henry kept playing hard in the second half, the margin continued to widen and when Hill hit her fourth three of the night with 6:11 left in the game, Atlee held a 68-26 lead.

  “Atlee was shooting the lights out of the building,” Nuckols said. “There’s only so much you can do about that.”

  Throughout the beginning of the season, Atlee had largely relied on taking numerous shots and crashing the offensive boards for put-backs. Prillaman was glad to see the shots finally fall. “I was telling our assistant coaches, when we hit shots I think there’s few teams in this region that can beat us,” she said. “The problem is this is our sixth game and this is probably the only game we’ve shot a god percentage.

  “Hopefully this is the start of a whole lot of games of us hitting it and not having to rely so much on those offensive boards,” Prillaman said.

  For Nuckols, the Atlee game was an aberration in light of how the Patriots have played so far this season. “I told them to just totally forget about it,” she said. “It’s a nondistrict game. Every time you come out you want to win but in the grand scheme of things, this game is not as important as our district games. We just need to learn from it.”

PATRICK HENRY (4-2) Huber 11, Willis 0, Anderson 7, Freeman 4, Smith 2, Schmitt 4, Kenney 7, Winston 1, Morton 4. Totals 16 6-14 40.
ATLEE (5-1) Townes 0, Hill 26, Taylor 2, Spiers 2, S. Henderson 9, T. Henderson 14, Price 12, Ashcraft 7, Eberle 6. Totals 31 6-7 78.
Patrick Henry 9 9 4 18 — 40
Atlee ..............25 21 14 18 — 78
3-point goals: PH — Huber. A — Hill 4, T. Henderson 2, Price 2, S. Henderson, Ashcraft.