Sparked by a freshman, the Lady Lancers remained unbeaten and clinched a spot in the state tournament Monday night beating a tough Canaseraga team 61-54.
Freshman McKenzie Bezon scored 29 points for Elba (22-0). She hit five three-point goals on the night.
"We got a great game from McKenzie tonight," said Head Coach Tom Nowak. "For a freshman, that was unbelievable."
It's a good thing, as Cassy Engle of Canaseraga (18-4) scored 34, to keep her team within striking distance of the Section V champions until the closing seconds of the Class D qualifying match.
"We tried to be able to run and push them as much as we could this game because we knew with our bench, hopefully we could try to tire them out a little bit," Nowak said. "I give them a lot of credit, they played hard the whole game."
Nowak said one of the keys to locking down the win was the team making the most of its free throws in the closing minutes of the game.
Elba returns to the Gate-Chili gym on Saturday to play in the first round of the State Championship tournament.
A couple of more pictures after the jump (BTW: I pretty much missed most of this game, having put a little too much trust in my GPS -- Gates-Chili is at 2 Spartan Road, but there's two 2 Spartan Roads in Rochester, as I discovered ... I went to the one 20 minutes past the actual location ... sadly).
