The rim was unkind to both the Open Door Patriots and Hearts for Jesus Guardians. But a dynamic scoring display by Liz Nejadfard and their ability to crash the boards allowed the Patriots to come out with a 30-19 victory on Nov. 30.
Nejadfard scored a career-high and a game-high 18 points while grabbing six rebounds and coming up with three steals.
“As a senior it’s a great feeling, I’m ready to play our game tomorrow,” Nejadfard said. “It was really exciting. It wasn’t just me, it was the whole team, too.”
The Patriots played collectively and effectively on the glass, coming up with 44 rebounds, including 18 offensive boards. Emmerson Dobson had a game-high 15 rebounds, and Maya Richey had 11. Dobson and Richey each scored two points.
It wasn’t just the effort of the team corralling rebounds, it was the all-around performance by the team considering it was the first game of the season, and the roster has plenty of underclassmen.
“We’re a really young team. I had seven girls tonight and five of them are freshmen, so that was their game. I like the hustle that they had and we knew that the other team (Hearts for Jesus) wasn’t really big, we’re not big, but we were athletic enough to outwork them on the boards and we did,” Open Door Coach Bud Turner said.
The Patriots and the Guardians were tied 6-6 after one quarter. Then Nejadfard took over, scoring seven of the team’s 14 points in the second quarter to lead 18-8 at halftime.
The Guardians managed to get within six in the third quarter at 18-12 at the 7:20 mark on a Julia Taylor basket, but it was the closest they would come for the rest of the game. Taylor scored a team-high nine points and had six rebounds and two steals.
It was a promising start to the season for Open Door after a difficult start to the 2014-2015 campaign. Due to injuries and a limited amount of girls that came out, they postponed their first three games of the season but were fortunate to reschedule them.
“We’re excited. They play well together. They’re excited, of course they were all really nervous but it was just fun for them to get out there and get this under their belt,” Turner said.
Open Door faces Heritage Christian – Brooklyn on Dec. 1 and will seek to continue its winning ways despite playing back-to-back nights with a short rotation.
“We match up pretty good with them last year, so we’ll see how it goes tomorrow. We’ll see how they come back from a good game,” Turner said.
