By RYAN ARENA
L’Observateur

LAPLACE — A non-district battle between teams enjoying success this season gave fans four exciting quarters Monday night as St. Charles Catholic hosted Haynes.

Haynes’ Whitney Harris sank a go-ahead 3-pointer with two minutes left, then found Natalie Rome open for a layup to create some breathing room in a 50-46 victory, the Yellowjackets’ fifth straight.

Trailing by four with 1:09 left, St. Charles ran a long possession resulting in a Caroline Julian pull-up jumper that found bottom, making it 48-46 with 15.6 seconds left. SCC forced a turnover defensively when its pressure resulted in a traveling violation.

But Haynes responded by flashing some defensive mettle of its own, forcing a Comets turnover out of bounds with three seconds remaining. Precocia Parlow leaked out on the ensuing inbounds play for a layup as time expired to cap things off.

Haynes coach Michael Bonura praised the play of Harris, his point guard, who came up big in the clutch.

“She doesn’t always get the publicity for the kind of player she is, because she’s an incredible defender,” Bonura said. “I feel she’s one of the best players in the city. She hit that walk up 3 that gave us momentum. Then I’m yelling at her to slow it down and take care of the ball, and she fires in that pass. She saw it there. She never loses confidence in her teammates.”

Comets assistant coach Nolan Louque said the game was a good gauge for his team headed into the second half of district competition.

“It was a quality effort,” Louque said. “Coming into this one, I told our girls this was going to be a good team and a good test for us. We didn’t get to practice for the last part of last week because of Carnival Ball, but I think the break might have actually helped us. We missed a lot of free throws and shot 9 for 23 in the paint. That cost us. But we shot it well from the outside and that’s a really positive sign.”

Lela Hill scored 20 points to go along with six rebounds and five assists. Maddie Murphy scored nine points, while Julian scored eight and grabbed seven rebounds.

Parlow led Haynes (16-9) with 12 points. Harris scored nine, Rome eight and Megan Giacone seven.

The Comets (13-9) built a five-point lead in the first quarter after buckets by Hill and Julian made it 17-12. Murphy ended the first quarter by sinking a jumper, and SCC led 21-16 headed into the second.

“We made some mistakes in our zone defense, extending too far to go for the knockout,” Bonura said. “St. Charles did a nice job finding those creases and exploiting it.”

The lead grew to nine when Julian sank another jumper to make it 25-16. Shantrae Coleman did some strong work inside to keep Haynes in it, scoring on back-to-back putbacks to cut the lead to five.  

SCC led 30-24 at halftime.

Haynes began to heat up from the outside, a Giacone 3 cutting the SCC lead to one early in the second half. Hill locked in offensively, scoring SCC’s next nine points, including an and-one 3-point play. Haynes briefly took a lead, but SCC quickly reclaimed it on a Hill jumper that made it 40-39 entering the fourth quarter.

“We’ve been working on our outside shooting for the past six to eight weeks,” Louque said. “At this point, we’re seeing it start to pay off.”

A Murphy jumper pushed SCC’s lead to three, but the Yellowjackets took control again via a 7-0 run capped by Rome’s layup.