Just grand
Senior makes three 3-pointers in opening 5:31 to hit milestone
In her final game in a Mount St. Charles uniform, girls’ hoop standout Katie Lynch scored 16 points to join the 1,000-point club.
“My hard work actually paid off. It’s been four years and this has been a goal since I was little, so actually accomplishing it is kind of crazy.”
— Mount St. Charles senior Katie Lynch
WOONSOCKET — When Mount St. Charles senior Katie Lynch started dribbling a basketball, she dreamed of one day scoring 1,000 points.
That opportunity came Wednesday night against Middletown in the Mounties’ penultimate regular-season game. What many people in attendance didn’t know was Wednesday’s game was going to be Lynch’s only opportunity to reach the milestone.
“Last game, yeah, there was a lot of pressure,” said Lynch, who will miss her team’s final game next week against Narragansett because of a school trip to Italy that begins Friday night. “My hard work actually paid off. It’s been four years and this has been a goal since I was little, so actually accomplishing it is kind of crazy.”
After scoring 24 points in her team’s previous game against Westerly, Lynch needed just 10 points to join former teammate Julia Laquerre in the program’s 1,000-point club.
An anxiety Lynch had about waiting until late in the second half to record the milestone point was gone just 5 minutes, 31 seconds into the contest.
Lynch connected on a right-wing 3-pointer 2:46 into the game and then she moved on to 997 points when she hit a left-wing 3-pointer five minutes into the contest. The milestone moment came with 10:29 left in the half when the 5-foot, 4-inch guard caught the ball on the left wing and banked in a 3-pointer.
“I was kind of hoping to hit a couple of 3s to get me above it, I hit three – which was nice,” Lynch said. “I didn’t call bank, it was off and I was like ‘No,’ and then it went in. I was like ‘What? That’s crazy.’ That was very relieving because everyone came tonight. They have the balloons and I didn’t want that to happen for no reason. It’s definitely exciting.”
“She’s extremely tough and smart,” said Mount coach Christina Batastini. “She understands angles that people her age don’t understand how to see the court. She has a knack for scoring and is just a player. In all the sports she plays in, she has a sixth sense when she’s on the court. She understands how to get open and you can’t teach any of that. I wish I had her for more than a year.”
The Mounties led by five after Lynch’s milestone hoop, but the talented Islanders responded with 21 of the game’s next 23 points thanks to Ireauna Pegus drives and offensive rebounding to take a lead they would never relinquish. Lynch scored a team-high 16 points and sophomore Riley Sprague scored all 13 of her points in the second half of a 48-41 Division II defeat.
Mount St. Charles (5-11 Divi- sion II) will miss the playoffs for the first time in Lynch’s career with the team’s final game coming next week against the Mariners.
“They were beating us to the right and getting offensive rebounds,” Batastini said. “It also hurt that Julia [Vanelli] picked up two early fouls, so we lost our best rebounder. We went to the 2-3 zone and that took away their drives and we had three people rebounding. I wish we went to the zone earlier, but you can never anticipate a 21-2 run. We knew coming into this game that Middletown could shoot, so the scouting report did not read to play them in zone.”
Middletown (12-3 Division II) remained in the hunt for the No. 1 seed in the playoffs and a spot in the open tournament with the victory. Pegus scored a team-high 13 points, while freshman wing Eliza Hellendrung added 10 points.
The Mounties went on a 12-5 run in less than three minutes to open up a 12-7 advantage. Lynch scored 10 of the 12 points, including the banked-in 3-pointer to reach the 1,000-point plateau. After a small ceremony, the Islanders came out and punished the smaller Mounties on the offensive glass. Hellendrung, Mackenzie Silveira and Erin Clancey gave the road side second- and third-chance opportunities which led to easy baskets. The Islanders went on a 21-2 run to take a 28-14 advantage with five minutes left in the half. Lynch and Talia Fernandes made baskets at the end of the half to close the gap to 11 at halftime.
Thanks to Vanelli and Sprague, the Mounties went on a 6-0 run to start the second half, but the Islanders answered to build the lead back to eight. Mount made it a 36-32 game on a Sprague bucket, but that was as close as the home side would get in a half where they had opportunities to make it a one-possession game.
“The biggest takeaway from the season is that Division II is a very tough league with a lot of parity,” Batastini said. “When you look at our games, we’ve essentially been in every game at the half. Middletown was 11-3 coming into this game and we could’ve beaten them. We could’ve beaten Juanita Sanchez and a lot of teams that are at the top of this division. There’s no question we can compete, we just need to get better at the little things.” MIDDLETOWN (48) Grace Haskell 2 0-0 5, Jessica Arsenault 2 1-3 6, Iseauna Pegus 5 2-3 1, Mackenzie Silveira 3 0-0 6, Eliza Hellendrung 4 2-4 10, Erin Clancey 2 3-4 8, toals 18 8-14 48.
MOUNT ST. CHARLES (41) Talia Fernandes 1 0-0 2, Riley Sprague 5 3-4 14, Nicole Lemos 1 0-0 2, Julia Vanelli 4 0-0 8, Meg Valentine 0 0-0 0, Lena Nguyen 0 0-0 0, Katie Lynch 5 3-4 16, totals 16 6-8 41. 3-pointers – M, Haskell, Arsenault, Pegus, Clancey; MSC, Lynch 3.
Halftime – Middletown, 29-18.