I got a text from another coach asking if our game was Live Streamed because he wanted to see if "Cheltenham was legit". The answer to that, in my opinion is a definite is yes. Going into the season, I thought that Cheltenham was going to be a tough team to beat and I was right. We're not going to out-big anyone this year and once we saw that Powell was out with an injury so we decided to go up-tempo and try to wear down Simmons and Price. In the 1st half I was starting to doubt that decision as we were down 32 - 28, but in the 3rd quarter we started to see the benefit. We were able to get some of their girls in foul trouble and at that point were were able to take advantage of a few favorable match-ups. Just when it looked like we were starting to pull away, my freshman point guard made a rookie mistake and picked up her 4th foul on a close play then got a technical and was out of the game. The silver lining to was that the rest of the team rallied and really picked up the slack behind her:
Dani Brusha, in spite of a tough game at the foul line was exceptional, she scored 28 points, 12 of which were in the 4th quarter. In addition to that, she stepped up and had to play tough defense on Simmons. She's and exceptional player and person and I've just been so impressed with her this year. She's a calming influence on a relatively young team.
As Dani was starting to wear down a bit, Briana McFerran stepped up and scored nine fourth quarter points. Perhaps, the biggest revelation for us tonight was Nikki Sahl. Nikki missed the start of the season and had the most complete game of her career. She came off the bench and totally changed the dynamic of the game.
All in all this was one of those games that you hope are the start of something good. It was a total team effort and for the first time we saw that, in spite of giving up 54 points, we were connected on defense. We played full court the entire game and the girls dug deep and were able to hold on.

Maya Simmons is as good as anyone in the league and Jiah Price just seemed to make big shot after big shot to keep them in it, we were fortunate that Powell was out. They do a lot of things well and as their bench players mature, they're going to continue to be a tough match up.