Published on: Thursday, February 12, 2009

By Brandy Simms

In a battle for first place in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference standings, Good Counsel rallied from a 16-point first quarter deficit Friday to earn a hard-fought 54-45 victory over Bishop McNamara at Kane Center.

“We just played a much better last three quarters than we did the first quarter,” said Good Counsel Head Coach Tom Splaine, whose team avenged last month’s two-point loss to McNamara.

On a night when Good Counsel senior Katie Sheahin struggled from the field early, the 5-foot-9 guard contributed in other ways by passing to open teammates, rebounding and blocking shots.

“If something isn’t falling,” said Sheahin, who scored 15 of her game-high 20 points in the second half, “then I’m just going to try to do what I can on everything else and that’s what I tried to do.”

Sheahin, who has signed with Loyola, missed all of her field goal attempts in the first half but managed to have success from the charity stripe, going 5-for-6 from the foul line before the intermission.

In the third quarter, Sheahin converted her first field goal of the game, a 3-pointer that came with 3:33 remaining in the period that cut the McNamara deficit to 33-30. “We left her open,” said McNamara Head Coach Robert Surratt. “She knocked it down.”

The Mustangs raced out to a 16-2 first quarter lead before Good Counsel outscored the Forestville private school in the second quarter, 14-12. In the third period, the Falcons outscored McNamara 20-8. The game was knotted at 36 apiece heading into the fourth quarter.

Good Counsel took its first lead with 7:26 remaining in the fourth period on a basket by sophomore Sydney Lewis. The Falcons, who outscored McNamara 18-9 in the fourth quarter, would never trail again.