Lawrence edged by Floral Park

After battling back from an immediate deficit and powering through obvious fatigue throughout the entire game, Lawrence fell to the Floral Park, 47-39, in a Nassau Conference A-III girls’ basketball matchup on Jan. 30.

Lawrence’s biggest issue was its lack of depth. The Lady Golden Tornadoes dressed only six players and didn’t sub until two minutes remained in the game, only doing so because of an injury.

“Our lack of depth has been an issue all year,” Lawrence coach George Klein said.  “Sometimes the girls get a little bit winded and I have to space timeouts based on resting instead of making corrections.”

Despite their lack of manpower, heart was no issue for Lawrence and its tenacity showed immediately. Floral Park came out of the gate like a rocket scoring six points in the first minute and 10 in total before a Dina Goldstein three put the Lady Golden Tornadoes on the board. The left-handed Goldstein almost single handedly brought Lawrence back to competitiveness, leading her team to a halftime deficit of just three and contributing 14 points to the effort.

“Dina’s been one of our top performers all year,” Klein said.  “Last game she scored 29 points. We go to Dina a lot, we depend upon her to put points on the board.”

The second half started much like the first one for Lawrence, however, as Floral Park switched to a box-and-one defense in an attempt to neutralize Goldstein. The plan worked to near perfection as Lawrence didn’t score for the first six minutes of the quarter, giving Floral Park a 12-point lead it would never relinquish.  

“Turnovers have been killing us all year long, we take six or seven straight trips down the floor without getting a shot off and that’s not going to translate into wins,” Klein said of his team’s issues with ball control.

With Goldstein relegated to a decoy roll she greatly improved her defense, recording a couple steals and shutting down the same girl who was defending her.  In desperate need of offense senior Nicole Robinson took over for Lawrence (4-9 overall) in all aspects of the game. Robinson not only led the way with 15 points but also was the game’s leading rebounder and even ran the point at times.

“Nicole has been pretty consistent all year long; she’s a four year starter so that tells you something,” Klein said.

Young Kaela Kinder was also impactful all night using her length on defense as well as directing the offense for the majority of the night. Working hard down low throughout was Kaleah Norwood and Tiffany Arboledo. The latter was the smallest player on the court but still made an impact under the rim.

The Conference A-III matchup between the teams was their second in three weeks; the first game was also close for the duration but Floral Park pulled out a 51-41 decision.

“We’ve been competitive in every game we’ve played,” Klein relished.