By Roger Gordon

Correspondent

When a basketball player has more steals than points in a game, the numbers are most likely in the neighborhood of three steals and two points or five steals and four points.

When a player scores 16 points in a game, however, their steals total is typically — actually never — going to be greater than their points total.

Make that almost never.

Livia Martini scored 16 points and totaled 17 — yes, 17 — steals Jan. 17 in leading Crestwood to a 48-45 victory at home over West Geauga, upping its record to 6-10.

The junior guard, who also tallied four rebounds and two assists, turned several of those steals into layups.

She raised her season steals total to a remarkable 126, just six shy of breaking her own school record of 131 set last season — and there are still several games left on the schedule.

“Liv is that good almost every game,” head coach T.J. Henderson said. “She always plays with a super high motor, never gives up much defensively. She’s so quick and so fast and she just keeps getting better and better seeing the floor, sort of reading what people are going to do, and then when she decides to go get the ball, it’s really impressive to see her take off and go get it. There are times, as coaches, we’ll laugh because she’ll start running and we’ll go, ‘Oh, there’s a steal,’ and, all of a sudden, she’ll just swipe the ball from someone, and we’re like, ‘Wow!’ ”

As for the game itself, the Red Devils led 10-7 after the first quarter, 32-23 at halftime and 39-38 after the third quarter.

“We came out super aggressive, using our athleticism,” said Henderson. “We played really good, competitive basketball. We were nowhere near perfect, but we never stopped playing hard. The girls really battled and played probably one of their better defensive games. Offensively, we ran some sets and had confidence in some shots that we hadn’t had lately, and they were falling. Usually when the ball goes in a couple times, it sort of breeds more confidence, and that’s sort of what happened.”

Other contributors included sophomore small forward Ava Lincoln (nine points), senior guard Becca Brady (eight points) and freshman forward Reese Harper (eight points).