BRIGHTON — Don Palmer was relieved, but not mollified, after his Hartland girls basketball team downed Brighton 56-43 on Friday night.
“I just looked at the book,” he said. “Lexey (Tobel) had 26 (points) and Greysen (Cockerham) 21, and that’s great for them. You don’t want to rely on that all the time, but tonight, I guess, it was necessary.”
It certainly was too much for a game Brighton team (9-5 overall, 6-2 KLAA West), which fell out of a three-way tie for first in the division.
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“They’re a really good team,” Brighton coach Paul Ash said. “Hats off to them. They played well and got the ball to the right people.”
The Eagles (12-1, 7-1) set up a showdown at home on Tuesday against Howell, which beat Pinckney 45-33.
The first half saw the lead shift back and forth several times, but the Eagles went into halftime up by three, 24-21, and came out with a new resolve.
“We focused on rebounding,” Cockerham said. “We wanted them to keep from getting boards, because that’s where they were getting most of their points.”
Brighton center Beth Dziekan had seven points in the first half, all in the paint, but was held to just one point after halftime.
Julianna Pietila helped pick up the slack, hitting a pair of 3s early in the fourth quarter to get Brighton to within three, 42-39.
But the Bulldogs could get no closer.
“We had a couple of turnovers, and they settled down and ran their offense,” Ash said. “Once they got a 3-5 point lead we were worried about (Hartland) holding the ball, so we had to extend our defense. Once we did that, they started the dribble penetration, and we were in trouble.”
The Bulldogs were forced to foul to stop the clock, and the Eagles took advantage, going 14-for-17, with Cockerham hitting nine of her 10 attempts.
“We work on that all of the time,” she said. “It’s one of the things we’ve struggled with, but it really helped us tonight.”
Pietila and Dana Schemanske each had 10 points for the Bulldogs.
“We’ll be Howell fans on Tuesday, and hope we can beat Howell on Friday,” Ash said, then laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that before. But we still have a lot to play for. There’s (the West) championship, the conference championship, and a district championship. We’re not done.”
The Eagles, meanwhile, were looking ahead to next week.
“Howell comes in Tuesday, and they’ll come in with one loss,” Palmer said. “But we’ll worry about that Sunday. We have to enjoy this a little bit.”
