Indians’ youthful lineup wins ‘C’ state crown
Sophomores, freshmen get school’s 1st hoop title
Someone missed the memo. High school basketball teams that rely on underclassmen aren’t supposed to succeed, let alone win a state championship, but that’s what the Cambridge girls pulled off Saturday night.
Cambridge held Watkins
Glen to 12 second-half points and raced to a 57-43 victory in the Class C state final at Hudson Valley Community College.
With their lineup of four sophomores and a freshman, the Indians delivered the school’s first New York State Public High School Athletic Association title in a sport other than football.
“We don’t feel like (we’re young),” sophomore center
Fiona Mooney said. “We’ve been doing this for a while.”
In his first season as varsity coach, Bob Phillips won with a team that could dominate the Class C ranks for a while. The Indians (25-1) used seven players — six sophomores and a freshman — to eliminate Watkins Glen (215), the Section IV champion.
“Last year (coach) Tony Bochette coined the phrase that he was laying a foundation for the program,” said Phillips, who was Bochette’s assistant. “The foundation was there, and later the house would be built. Maybe a little sooner than expected, we put the shingles on the house tonight. Maybe we’ll look at adding a garage or another house to the whole compound in the future.”
Plenty of Phillips-head tools were used for construction.
Phillips’ twin daughters, Sophie and Lilly, are a major part of the team. In the championship game, Sophie had 24 points, 17 rebounds, six assists and two steals. Lilly chipped in with four points and seven rebounds.
“I’ve always played with Sophie, and that’s great,” Lilly Phillips said, “but just to play with him as our coach, it was amazing to do it all together as a family.”
“You love your daughters,” their father/coach said, “and you love the fact that you’re able to be close to them a lot, more than maybe anyone else in another situation. I’ve come up with these guys and their friends. It’s special because they’re a part of it, but also because their friends are a part of it.”
Some of their friends were a key part of helping the Indians finally take control late.
It was a 41-39 two minutes into the fourth quarter when freshman Stasia Epler hit a pair of 3-pointers to ignite a 9-0 run.
“It did settle things down for us,” coach Phillips said. “We’ve never been a team that gets too worried about what happens, but we settled in, they settled in. We were able to see that, OK, we’re in this game, we can slow the speed down a little bit, play our game, do what I need to do.”
Epler finished with 14 points. Mckayla Mclenithan added 10. Mooney, who had missed seven games with a broken wrist before returning for Cambridge’s semifinal victory Friday, had five.
It was the defense that turned things in the Indians’ favor.
Watkins Glen, which led by three after one quarter and trailed by only two at halftime, made 6 of 15 from 3-point range in the first half. The Senecas were 0-for-8 after that, part of an 18 percent shooting performance in the second half.
“The big thing was, we extended them a little by picking up more full court,” coach Phillips said.
It also helped that Cambridge outrebounded Watkins Glen 4023, including 26-10 in the second half, and that the Senecas were hampered by fouls. Two players fouled out as Watkins Glen was called for 20 fouls, compared to only eight for the Indians.
“We’ve worked so hard for it,” Sophie Phillips said. “Because we’re so young we’re going to be back for a couple of more years. We’re going to keep on working hard.”
“We’re definitely not done,” Epler said. “We’re really young, our experience is old.”