Girls Basketball – Lancers Cruise Past Gill St. Bernards

Holmdel, NJ- From the opening tip-off there was no question St. John Vianney was ready to continue their winning ways. Entering the game on a 12 game winning streak, the Lancers have been playing complete “Team” ball as of late and Sunday afternoon was another example of it. The Lancers put together a great game plan and executed it to perfection in their 71-55 win over Gill St. Bernards.

Junior center Kimi Evans was the focal point of the offense early on and she pounded the lane for 11 first half points. With the ball getting to Evans easy and often, the Knights tried to shift rotation to slow her down which just opened scoring opportunities for senior guard Tina Lebron, senior guard Vannesa Pinho, junior guars Julia Ramos and senior point guard Kelly Campbell. The Lancers combined to outscore Gill St. Bernards 38-30 at the half.

The second half St. John Vianney built their lead to 58-41 by the end of the third quarter with more from Kimi Evans who finished her scoring with 18 total points. The Knights had no answer for Kimi who scored at will and used her teammates when lanes closed on her.

Afterwards when asked about her play in the paint tonight, Evans added “it all starts and ends with the team, we all have responsibilities to do and the game plan was for me to get the ball and drive to the basket.”

Coach Karpell afterwards had this to add about Kimi “Kim is a big part of our offense and after watching film on Bernards we thought we could utilize her size and ability so the thought was to get her the ball early and it worked.”

Also when asked about her ability to rotate players in, coach Karpell added "I have faith in everyone of the girls on the team, it is  a coach's dream to be able to rotate a starter out and not miss a beat.  Today we were able to get scoring from nine different players which shows that the girls all believe in one another and any given day it could be someone else's turn to step up."

St. John Vianney improved their record to 15-1 overall and remains as the #1 team in the latest NJ.com Top 20 poll. Following Sunday’s 71-55 the Lancers have no time to rest as they take on a hungry Manasquan team on Tuesday night, Blair High School on February 8^th and Red Bank Catholic to wrap up the regular season on February 13^th.

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