Basketball Preview: Cathedral Fighting Irish vs. Hamilton Southeastern Royals
The Cathedral Fighting Irish will head out on the road to challenge the Hamilton Southeastern Royals at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Cathedral will head into Thursday's matchup out to bounce back: they lost a heartbreaker on Thursday after a huge 23-point win in their prior game. They fell just short of Mooresville by a score of 52-49. For those keeping track at home, that's the closest defeat the Fighting Irish have suffered since December 9, 2023.
Meanwhile, you're bound to get a positive result if you outscore your opponent every quarter, and that's exactly how it played out for Hamilton Southeastern on Wednesday. Given that consistent dominance, it should come as no surprise that they blew Franklin Community out of the water with a 69-13 final score. The game was pretty much decided by the half, when the score had already reached 46-9.
Maya Makalusky was a one-man wrecking crew for Hamilton Southeastern as she went 6 for 8 from beyond the arc en route to 33 points. The match was Makalusky's third in a row with at least ten points. Another player making a difference was Kayla Stidham, who scored 11 points plus two steals.
Hamilton Southeastern was working as a unit and finished the game with 20 assists. They easily outclassed their opponents in that department as Franklin Community only racked up four.
The victory (which was Hamilton Southeastern's third in a row) raised their record to 3-0. Those victories were due in large part to their offensive performance across that stretch, as they averaged 63.0 points per game. As for Cathedral, their loss ended a four-game streak of wins at home dating back to last season and dropped them to 1-2.
Cathedral took a serious blow against Hamilton Southeastern when the teams last played back in December of 2023, falling 66-31. A big factor in that loss was the dominant performance of Makalusky, who went 10 for 12 en route to 27 points. Now that Cathedral knows the damage she can cause, will they be able to stop her this time? There's only one way to find out.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps