Maryknoll rolls to 69-20 win over McKinley

Maryknoll's Maya Rodrigues-Chang drives to the basket against McKinley. Greg Yamamoto | SL

Maryknoll's starters set the tone early, and the bench took care of the rest in a 69-20 win over host McKinley in the opening game of the Hawaii Self Storage Black and Gold Classic at Student Council Gymnasium.

Starting guards Alexis Delovio scored 9 points and added 3 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals, and her backcourt mate Rhianne Omori added 7 points and 2 steals, but it was the Spartans' reserves that stole the show down the stretch.

While much of the offense flowed through Delovio when she was on the floor, Maryknoll head coach Chico Furtado probably would like to transition her away from that role before long.

"Right now we've got some really young point guards that we're trying to mix in so we're trying to slide Lexi to the 2 get her in the open court a little bit so she can attack the bucket in some open court situations," said Furtado.

Returning players coming off the bench are clearly a nice luxury for Maryknoll.

Junior Maya Rodrigues-Chang had a team-high 10 points, senior Maegen Martin added 6 points, 4 rebounds and 2 steals and senior Kayla Agustin 5 points off the bench for Maryknoll, as the Spartans' reserves accounted for 33 of the 69 points put up on the scoreboard and outscored the first five 28-20 in the final three periods of play.

"We're going to depend on Maya and Kayla (Agustin) a little bit off the bench and some of the girls that played for us last year and have that experience," remarked Furtado of the production of his veterans on his second line.

The Spartans jumped out to a 20-0 advantage after the first quarter of play, and stretched the margin to 30-0 before Teane Sofa hit a free throw at the 4:24 mark in the second to break the drought for the Tigers.

Maryknoll's bench accounted 14 of the 36 first half points put on the scoreboard, with first year players Kehau Gilliland (6 points, 6 rebounds), Isabella Cravens (4 points, 8 rebounds) and Chayne Milne (4 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists) leading the way.

"I think it's going to very important," said Furtado when asked about the contributions made by his freshman reserves in the contest. "We lost three quality seniors last year, so somebody's gotta step up. We looking for some of our freshmen but they're young and its going to take some time for them to develop and get comfortable at this level."

To the Tigers credit, the host team came out of the intermission firing, hitting back-to-back-to-back three-pointers during a 9-4 scoring spurt, but Maryknoll recovered after the initial surge, holding the Tigers scoreless over the final 5 minutes of the quarter.

"We're trying to mix things up, played some zone in the second half, trying to incorporate some of that because we've got some length in the post," said Furtado. "We're a little raw when it comes to man defense so we might have to play some zone."

Despite the early lapse out of the intermission, the Spartans defense tirelessly attacked passing lanes and made executing anything in the half court set difficult for the Tigers all afternoon, with a trapping style in the half court that helped result in 14 steals as a team.

Kenzie Hernandez-McKenzie led McKinley with 9 points and 3 rebounds in the loss.

The Spartans didn't hang around very long after their opening game win over the host Tigers. It was straight to the bus and off to a second game against Farrington, part of a six games in three days stretch for Maryknoll.

"We had eight days of practice, so it pretty good that we were able to do as well did this game. There's still things that we can work on, but hopefully for the season willl perfect those skills," said Rodrigues-Chang.

Reach Brien Ing at [email protected].