Seton Keough’s No. 1 girls basketball team was under more pressure than it expected to beat New York’s St. John the Baptist last night at Western’s Breezy Bishop Classic.

The Cougars, from West Islip, were ranked No. 1 on Long Island by Newsday and No. 6 in the nation by USA Today. But last night’s game grew in stature after No. 2 St. Frances struck the first blow, beating the Cougars, 56-35, on Saturday night.

Not to be outdone, the Gators pressed their way to a 10-1 lead and went on to win, 58-42.

All-Metro 6-foot-3 center Asya Bussie gave a strong performance against the Cougars’ 6-foot-4 Christine Huber. Boswell said Bussie must have grown an inch because the two were eye-to-eye. Bussie had eight points and 12 rebounds and Huber, who had 12 points, fouled out in the fourth quarter.

At that point, Boswell took Bussie out, too. The coach sat most of her starters late when the Gators' lead built to 20, because this was the first of five games the Gators play in seven days – none of them easy.

Tonight, it’s Towson Catholic at home at 5:30. Wednesday night, they head to No. 6 McDonogh and Friday night, to No. 4 Arundel before finishing the week Saturday at neighborhood rival Mount de Sales.

When asked who made up that schedule, Boswell laughed and said, “the athletic director.” Well, she is the athletic director.

Boswell said her coaching staff has been talking about how to approach this stretch, because, last week’s games were lopsided – two league wins by an average of 47.5 points. So how to get ready for this week’s grind?

“We walk a fine line our league,” said Boswell. “We don’t want to run up the score, but our starters haven’t been playing the minutes they need to play. Asya, we’re going to need her to play 30-32 minutes. We had a light practice [Saturday] but we ran some hard drills for the first half hour. That seemed to work. We started off hard [yesterday]. We went up 10-1. So we balance that the best we can.”

The starting guards – B.J. Williams, Katelyn Fischer and Arika Ullman – also face a test of stamina, because they are perpetual motion in the Gators’ constant pressure defense.

“I told the girls our schedule is what it is,” said Boswell. “We can’t get out of it. They have the experience. Now, we’ll see how tough they are.”

-- Katherine Dunn