Brookfield Central Girls Fall To West Allis Central

Every team, no matter how talented, how well coached or how experienced, has a bad night. The Brookfield Central Lancers girls had theirs Friday.

Brookfield Central lost on the road 44-31 to West Allis Central, a team they beat about a month ago. It was the Lancers first conference loss this season.

Brookfield Central, 14-5  overall and now 11-1 in the Greater Metro Conference, has dominated the conference all season. Friday's game against West Allis (15-6, 10-3), however, shows that even the best have bad nights.

Senior forward Valerierose Agnello led the scoring with 14 points, but the team got off to a bad start and were unable to recover from a double-digit deficit at the close of the first half.

So, what caused the bad start? Turnovers? The Lancers had nine in the first half.  Missed 3-point shots? The Lancers went 1-9 from long range tonight. An overall lack of offense? The Lancers scored just three points in the first 13 minutes of the game, and didn't score their first points until late in the first quarter.

“We weren't really ready to play tonight at the beginning of the game,” said Brookfield Central head coach Dan Wandrey said.  “West Allis Central did some different things and we weren't really ready for it and we didn't adapt very well.”

Indeed, it appeared the Lancers looked confused in the game's opening minutes. The Lancers turned the ball over four times and didn't score until there was just one minute left in the first quarter.

West Allis didn't fare much better on offense in the first quarter, scoring only six points in the first seven minutes of the game. Still, the Lancers were behind 27-11 at the half.

The Lancers came out to play in the second half, narrowing the Bulldogs lead to just seven points several times in the fourth quarter. And although Brookfield Central made it an interesting second-half game, it wasn't enough. 

The Lancers next play a non-conference match-up at home with Milwaukee King on Tuesday. Tipoff is 7:30 p.m.