Daphne Ginn of Lawrence jostles with Alexis Williams for position in a basketball game at Lawrence High School, Jan. 8, 2010. (Staff photo by Myles Ma.)

Playing a close game can reveal a team’s personality.

When the Nottingham girls’ basketball team stretched leads by out-muscling the Cardinals inside, Lawrence fought back with tenacious defense and fast-break scoring.

In the end, the Northstars won out, beating the Cardinals, 62-61, at Lawrence High School to improve to 4-3. The Cardinals dropped to 1-5.

Nottingham exerted the force of its personality in the paint, where its forwards dominated the glass, and provided reliable inside scoring whenever the Northstars needed it. Nottingham only had trouble when it settled for jumpers. In fact, the team didn’t convert a single 3-point attempt, getting all its scoring inside the arc and from the free-throw line.

The Cardinals had no answer for the size and inside scoring of senior forward Kim Murl, who scored a game-leading 25 points ­— almost all of them in the post — on a night when the Northstars’ jumpers weren’t falling. The Northstars took an early lead over Lawrence early thanks offensive rebounding, and the subsequent second-chance scores.

But where Nottingham’s post players were a steady source of scoring, Lawrence’s talented scoring guards kept the Cardinals from falling too far behind. Lawrence was in a hole when the first quarter ended, but talented freshman guard Daphne Ginn went on a hot streak to bring the Cardinals back to within closing distance.

Ginn scorched the Northstars during the second quarter. In one sequence, she had back-to-back coast-to-coast layups to help lead the Cardinals back into contention.

“Spark is a great word to describe her,” Lawrence head choach Dana Williams said of Ginn.

Ginn has consistently been among the Cardinals’ top scorers on the season, but Williams said Ginn also grabs a disproportionate number of rebounds from her guard position, has picked up the offense quickly, and is an effective, ball hawking defender.

While Ginn sparked the Cardinals early, finishing with 15 points, junior guard Jasmine Bowen almost stole the game with her play late. At one point Nottingham led by 18, but the Cardinals surged to within one behind Bowen, who led Lawrence with 21 points, including two three-pointers as the Cardinals made their run.

Nottingham High coach Sharon Conover was pleased with the win on the road, but said her team needed to improve under pressure.

On the final possession, had Nottingham inbounded safely, the game would have been over, but Cardinals junior guard Lynne Hurley stole the ball. Luckily for the Northstars, the ensuing frantic shot missed and they secured the rebound, but it was no doubt more drama than Conover anticipated after being up double digits.

“We’ve got to play hard for 32 minutes,” she said.

Regardless, Conover puts a lot of trust in her team. As Lawrence made its charge, she considered switching out of the matchup zone defense that had stifled the Cardinals up to that point, but her team convinced her that they could get the job done in the zone.

Conover said her team had good leadership, and that she had at least seven players she could depend on any given night. She likely had Murl in mind, as well as forward Alexis Williams, who helped keep Nottingham in control of the boards all night.