After being torched for 43 points by Lindsay Poss when his squad faced Poolesville on Dec. 21, Seneca Valley High School girls basketball coach Todd Bumgardner pulled out all the stops to negate a repeat performance.

The Screaming Eagles did everything from a box-and-one defense to doubling Poss even when she didn’t have the ball and the strategy worked as the two-sport star finished with seven points, 13.6 points below her season average.

All of that attention to Poss, however, opened up looks for her teammates, who more than picked up the slack en route to a commanding 55-41 road victory to remain in second place behind Damascus in the Montgomery 3A/2A Division.

Four players in all totaled 10 or more points for the Falcons (10-5, 8-2 3A-2A division) and seven girls in all scored, including 12 points from Jocelyn Bodmer, 11 from Patti Maloney and 10 each from Whitney Carmack and Kelly Hughes.

“It was really great [to see others picking up the scoring slack],” Poss said. “A year ago it the playoffs, we played Walkersville and they used a box-and-one on me and we didn’t have a lot of people step up their game. Having other people scoring is going to help us in the long run.”

It certainly aided the Falcons Friday night as they overcame a slow start offensively through back-to-back 3-pointers from Carmack and then a last second layup in transition by Poss for a 19-11 lead after one quarter of play.

In the second quarter, Maloney knocked in five of her nine first half points and Hughes scored six points to push the lead to 30-20 at halftime. Hughes scored the final points of the half in the closing seconds in transition after a 3-pointer by Seneca’s Sasha Orr had breathed some life into the Screaming Eagles, who were plagued by cold shooting from the field all night.

“We haven’t had that too many times this year,” said Poolesville coach Fred Swick of his team’s balanced scoring. “If I was coaching Seneca, I’d use a box-and-one too [but] Whitney Carmack and Patti Maloney and all the other kids stepped up and contributed to our success.”

Six girls netted a point or more in the third quarter to extend Poolesville’s lead to 43-28 going into the final eight minutes. Seneca Valley got only as close as 12 points the rest of the way while leading scorers Bridget Rothert and Orr were limited to six and five points, respectively. That pair came into the game averaging roughly 32 combined points per game.

“We just had a cold shooting night and they played a really good game defensively,” Bumgardner said. “We made a real concerted effort to stop Poss and I thought we did a good job of that. Our shots just weren’t falling. It’s not very often Bridget has a cold shooting night; you’re going to have nights like that sometimes.”

jpeters@gazette.net

Poolesville 55, Seneca Valley 41

Poolesville (10-5) 19 11 13 12 55

Seneca Valley (10-6) 11 9 8 13 41

Poolesville — Patti Maloney 11, Lindsay Poss 7, Jocelyn Bodmer 12, Whitney Carmack 10, Kelly Hughes 10, Kelsey Carnahan 3, Rose Barry 2.

Seneca Valley — Bridget Rothert 6, Alicia Mills 4, Erin Gary 5, Sasha Orr 5, Craig 3, CeAyra Brown 10, Marissa Rakow 8.