Notre Dame girls basketball falls to Weston

The effort was there. The shots were not.

For the first 12 minutes of a 47-37 loss to Weston last Friday, the Notre Dame-Fairfield girls basketball team proved it could exert energy and play stout defense as much as its opponent. The Lady Lancers, which lost their sixth consecutive game, could not get the ball to make its way through the basket.

Notre Dame missed its first 15 shots of the game (0-for-10 in the first quarter) before junior Nicole Negron ended the drought by sliding to the basket for a lay-up bank shot with 4:32 to go until halftime.

"A lot of our shots weren't dropping. I just kept saying to myself, `Keep working hard,'" said Negron of her thought process before her shot found the net.

Negron scored a team-high 17 points and nine rebounds for the Lady Lancers (5-11, 2-9 in the South West Conference) despite the fact that she switched from being a guard to playing in the post to fill in the gap left by forward Destiny George. Plagued by flu-like symptoms while sitting in the stands watching the preceding junior varsity game, George did not play.

"I think this game is kind of like a little microcosm of our whole season in terms of we've been dealt a little bit of adversity," Notre Dame Coach Eric DeMarco said. "It's hard to go eight minutes and not score and be able to actually say you're still in a game, but that's a credit to the level of defense that we were really able to play."

DeMarco said he was pleased with the efforts of forwards Victoria Wainwright and Alyssa Furgiule, who both came off the bench and were able to provide an immediate presence in George's absence. Furgiule, a freshman, snagged eight rebounds while scoring four points.

After posting just seven points at the half, Notre Dame was actually able to outscore Weston (12-4, 8-3) 30-27 in the second half thanks in large part to four 3-pointers by junior guard Annie Sutilla, who finished with 14 points. Monique Plummer's two points rounded out Notre Dame's scoring total. Sutilla's 3-pointers were able to create a spark among Notre Dame's crowd, but the team's offensive production started too late to equate to a rally.

"We took a little momentum and I hope it's something that we can build on, but give Weston credit: They pretty much controlled the game from start to finish," DeMarco said.

Weston, which in contrast extended its winning streak to five games, was lead by the 17 points and eight rebounds of junior Christina Welsh and the 16 points and 13 rebounds of senior Brittany Swanson. The Lady Trojans also recorded 10 steals.

"Defensively I thought our effort was pretty good. Notre Dame's a good ball club. They can score points. They were cold in the first half," Weston Coach Pat Cole said. "I thought offensively we had some things we had to work out and at the end of the day I think we did what we needed to do to get out of here with a win."

Notre Dame-Fairfield, which beat Stratford on Monday, will play its final home game against Masuk Friday at 7 p.m