BCC Women’s basketball team start weak, but deliver the goods

By Katie Drahos.
They say defense wins games, and at last Wednesday’s North Seattle women’s basketball game, it could not be truer for the Bellevue Community College Bulldogs. With a final score of 59-54, BCC was able to clench a win against the North Seattle Storm. The first half started rough. It took BCC seven minutes to score their first basket, while the Storm dominated the court and racked up eight in the same time span. Countless travels and missed opportunities by the Bulldogs got the Storm off to their early lead. With about six minutes left in the first half, BCC really put the pressure on and held the Storm at 12 while tying it up. At the five-minute mark, freshman forward Amy Rochowiak hit a three point basket to put the Bulldogs in the lead. This would be the only three point shot that the Bulldogs would manage to make out of 13 attempts in the first half. The lead was short lived when BCC fouled and sent the Storm to the line, where they tied it up. The rest of the half was back and forth on both ends. At the end of the first half, the score was 17-21 to the Storm. When asked about how he felt about the team’s progress in the first half, BCC Assistant Coach Dan Toblin said, “We are playing good defense, we just need to make the shots. Once the shots start dropping this will be a different game.” Toblin’s prediction was correct, and BCC came into the second half ready to play. Starting with a bang, Cassie Landdeck nailed a three-pointer to put the Bulldogs only down by one point. That set the pace for the rest of the game, with the bulldogs scoring 42 points in the second period compared to only 17 in the first. With 15 minutes left in the game, BCC had 15 substitutions, in an attempt to keep the Storm on their toes. BCC’s defense once again was stellar, forcing the Storms point guard to have 11 of the team’s 23 turnovers, which gave the Bulldogs many opportunities to score. “They played good defense in the first half … [and] in the second half, they played good offense,” said head Coach Brent Hermanson when asked about how he felt the ladies played throughout the game. “When we can hold a team to under 60 points in our league we have done a good job.”