Three a charm for Sage Hill

NEWPORT COAST — The St. Margaret’s girls’ basketball team kept jacking up three-pointers like they were going out of style.

“Get a hand up,” Sage Hill School girls’ basketball players heard often during Tuesday night’s Academy League game against rival St. Margaret’s, trying to keep a leg up in league. “She’s a shooter!”

Thirty three-pointers was the final tally taken by St. Margaret’s. But the Tartans missed 25 of them, enabling the Lightning to crash the defensive boards.

That’s something Sage junior forward Tierney Danner knows how to do.

Danner had 16 points, 14 rebounds and three blocked shots to help Sage Hill hand St. Margaret’s its first league loss, 47-41, at Sage Hill.

The Lightning (11-6, 3-1 in league) and St. Margaret’s (13-3, 3-1) now share the Academy League lead with six games still to play.

It’s not a position the Tartans are usually in, but St. Margaret’s came into the game ranked tied for fifth in the CIF Southern Section Division IV-AA poll released Monday. Sage Hill was ranked No. 10.

“Last year, they finished last in league, but they got their point guard [Kayla Moritzky] and their post [Claire Hosinski] over the summer,” Sage Coach Lou Silverman said. “They’ve had a pretty good stretch so far. We certainly respected them coming in, and we’re happy with what the scoreboard said at the end of 32 [minutes] tonight.”

Hosinski scored the game’s first basket, but the Lightning would never trail again. They immediately went on a 14-1 run that spanned most of the rest of the first quarter. Junior guard Morgan Hembarsky hit two long jumpers in the rally.

Senior point guard Katie McKeon said it was important to come back strong after Friday’s 32-27 loss at Brethren Christian that she called “a really bad loss.”

“I think we played really well as a team,” said McKeon, who scored nine and dished out eight assists. “[The Brethren loss] kind of made us realize that we had to play hard as a team to be competitive in league.”

Sage was up by five early in the fourth quarter, before Hembarsky and McKeon made back-to-back three-pointers to push the lead to 43-32.

“We did a good job with the energy, with the intensity,” Silverman said. “We had five people playing real hard on the defensive end, five people going really hard on the boards and five people working hard to give us good looks on the offensive end. It sounds easy when you say it, but getting it to all happen against a quality team speaks to the character of the kids on our team. They were able to bounce back from a subpar game and come back with a great performance.”

But the Tartans, whose 41 points were a season low, kept fighting.

Senior forward Lauren Ciccomascolo (16 points) connected from behind the three-point line to bring St. Margaret’s within 43-39 with 2:18 to play. Then, a layup by Paige Selby brought the visitors within four again with 40 seconds to play.

St. Margaret’s fouled, then tried to pressure for a steal. Instead the Lightning moved the ball around to find sophomore forward Hannah Jeffrey (six points, seven rebounds) for an open layup to ice the game.

“We really wanted this game,” said Danner, who scored 10 of her 16 points in the second half. “Everyone on the team kept it up the whole game. We never stopped.”

Junior forward Stephanie Garrison had six points and 12 rebounds for Sage Hill, which received its usual shutdown defensive effort from senior guard Jordan Hidalgo (three steals).

The Lightning held Moritzky, the sophomore standout who came into the game averaging a team-high 18.3 points per game, to 10 points on four-of-16 shooting. St. Margaret’s also didn’t help itself by converting just three of 14 free throws.

“We knew that [Moritzky] was one of their good shooters, so we kept an eye on her,” McKeon said. “But, they had a lot of good shooters we had to keep our eye on. Jordan played great defense, as usual.”

Academy League

Sage Hill 47, St. Margaret’s 41

SCORE BY QUARTERS

SM – Ciccomascolo 16, Moritzky 10, Grayden 6, Hosinski 5, Selby 4.

3-pt. goals – Ciccomascolo 3, Moritzky 2.

Fouled out – Selby.

SH – Danner 16, Hembarsky 10, McKeon 9, Garrison 6, Jeffrey 6.

3-pt. goals – Hembarsky 2, McKeon 1.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or by e-mail at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.