Six quick points by Parkland and more missed shots by Freedom prompted Patriot coach Dean Reiman to call a timeout before Friday night’s girls’ basketball game got out of hand.

“He brought us back to the Central game where we let it get too far out of hand, and we realized that this was our game, and we need to turn it on because we need to start winning big games to put us in a good position,” said Freedom guard Brenna Ortwein.

The Patriots responded with successive threes by Rachel Sanchez, Ortwein, and Kailey Turpening, and another by Turpening to start the second quarter, ultimately winning, 39-27.

Still, the Pates led by only five points at halftime, 19-14, and had just lost a heartbreaker by one point to Northampton three days earlier.

“We talked about how we have to go at them in the first few minutes of the third quarter,” Ortwein said. “They’re always most important and that’s when we set the tone that the second half was going to be ours too.”

Freedom was obviously out sized with three Trojan starters 6’0 and taller.

“The whole week we’ve been talking about being tough on the boards, and you can box out anyone no matter how tall they are, and working on help defense, our guards were a big part of stopping them,” said Ortwein. “Our post players did a great job. We were getting rebounds, and we didn’t give up offensive or defensive boards, and we kept them on the outside which really worked to our advantage.”

The Trojans had just one three pointer in the game, by Claire Courter, but scoring in the third quarter did not begin until 3:30 had passed when Courter had two points. Freedom maintained the lead, including another three from Turpening and two important points from Sanchez to end the period.

Defensively, the Pates needed to shut down Parkland forward Kassidy Stout, who had 11 points in the game.

“We knew they had a shooter with a lot of threes on the year and Yas [Herrera] and Rachel did a good job defending her and not losing her,” Ortwein said.

It was the fourth quarter when Freedom picked up extra momentum, especially with back-to-back baskets by Corrin Gill.

“When we started pressing and getting aggressive, that’s what he’s looking for,” said Ortwein, regarding Coach Reiman.

This Friday, Freedom will travel to face East Stroudsburg North.