Portland girls basketball proving it's capable of more, routs East Lansing
PORTLAND — It didn't sit well for Ashley Bower and the Portland girls basketball team when it dropped a big CAAC White game on the road against Lansing Catholic earlier this month.
And the defending Division 2 state champion Raiders have been determined to prove they're capable of more since that narrow Jan. 14 setback.
Portland has done just that.
The latest instance came Tuesday when the Division 2 No. 8-ranked Raiders posted a 45-21 victory over CAAC Blue leader and Division 1 No. 8 East Lansing at home.
"It's huge for us," Portland coach Jason Haid said. "Coming off that tough loss against Lansing Catholic, we wanted to prove to ourselves we're capable of more and we wanted to do it against a really good team, which East Lansing is a really good team. I think we proved we're capable of more and we played with a sense of urgency, a little bit of passion defensively.
"We rebounded well, which we haven't been doing very well as of late. It's nice to see the things we're concentrating on in practice are kind of showing in the games."
Tuesday's win was the third straight for Portland since the loss and the second over a team that's been ranked in the Associated Press poll. The Raiders knocked off then Division 2 No. 10 ranked Chelsea last week.
"That loss to Lansing Catholic was obviously hard for us," Bower said. "Watching back on film, we were able to learn a lot of things of what we needed to improve on and get better at in order to win in big games like this.
"One thing that really hurt us against Lansing Catholic was rebounding so we've been pushing ourselves practice just to rebound better offensively and defensively."
Portland has done that and thrived on defense Tuesday while handing East Lansing (8-4) a second straight loss by more than 20 points. That defense was key in the third quarter as the Raiders broke the contest open.
"Our main focus this year has been becoming a great defensive team," said Bower, who had a game-high 20 points and also helped the Raiders limit East Lansing star Soraya Timms to two points.
"We work hard every practice just to take away what other teams want to do. That's a big part of why we've been successful this year and I know we're going to continue to push ourselves defensively."
That will be important for the Raiders with several other big games looming over the next few weeks, starting with Thursday's matchup against CAAC Red leader Haslett. Division 4 No. 2 Fowler, a rematch with Division 2 No. 3 Lansing Catholic, Detroit Renaissance and Lowell are among the other big games over the next month for Portland.
"We've got a really tough schedule," Haid said. "These guys know we've got to focus in on practice and just try to get better each and every day at whatever our deficiencies are because we're capable of going on a run here. We've got to fix some things. We're getting them fixed and it was nice to see kind of that come to fruition tonight."
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Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @brian_calloway.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Portland girls basketball proves its capabilities, tops East Lansing
