Gaines leads Pirates to win

• Reprints

Updated: February 19, 2012 8:25AM

MERRILLVILLE — Victoria Gaines found herself surrounded by Hobart players all night.

It seemed like no matter where Merrillville’s freshman forward turned, she found a fortress of arms in her face.

While defensive attention like that might be enough to frustrate any player — let alone a freshman — she maintained her composure and kept attacking the basket.

All Gaines did was score 14 of her game-high 23 points in the second half, helping the Pirates (16-0) to a 50-34 non-conference win over Hobart (10-9) Tuesday night.

“At halftime, coach (Amy Govert) told me they were fouling me all the time,” Gaines said. “She told me that I just have to stay with it and go up really strong, so that’s what I did. I did get frustrated in the second quarter, but she sat me down and told me I couldn’t get frustrated.”

The Pirates were extremely strong defensively the first half in building a 21-5 lead.

Merrillville held the Brickies to only one field goal — a basket early in the first quarter by Grayce Roach — before holding them scoreless the second quarter.

“I thought we lost intensity on the defensive end in the second half,” Govert said. “We lost a little bit of focus defensively the second half, instead of clamping down on them again.”

Gaines said she wasn’t sure what happened defensively in the second half.

“We just have to bring the ‘D’ from the first half to the second,” she said.

Hobart coach Mike Hamacher said Gaines was a load for his players to handle.

“She’s a great basketball player,” he said. “She’s a tough matchup, because if you put someone big on her, then you’ve created a quickness matchup problem. If you put someone smaller and quicker on her, then you’ve got a size and rebounding matchup problem.”