PERFECT REVENGE
No. 1 Tolman avenges lone regular-season loss to claim Division III championship
PROVIDENCE — Was is aesthetically pleasing? Not exactly.
At times, did it frustrate veteran coach Walter ‘Bunky’ Gonzalez? Sure.
But did the No. 1 Tolman girls basketball team’s style of play produce a championship? Absolutely.
The Tigers came into Sunday’s Division III championship game with No. 3 Pilgrim with a simple game plan: make the Patriots win the game from the outside. The turnover-prone Tigers packed the paint with center Victoria Percy and forward Amsatou Diagne and controlled the game from there.
While the Tigers committed 37 turnovers, they did more than enough to avenge their only defeat of the regular season. Senior point guard Julia Al-Amir garnered MVP honors with a pair of 3-pointers and seven points, while Tamara Negron produced a game-high nine points in a 37-26 victory at RIC’s Murray Center.
“I am so proud, there are no other words to explain it,” said Al-Amir, who played a couple of minutes in the 2016 title victory over Mount St. Charles when she was a freshman. “This was a team effort, it was never about one person. Like I said [after the semifinal win over Burrillville], it’s about never giving up. Today, we proved everyone wrong.”
“I don’t even know what to say, this all happened so fast,” junior guard Thania Santana said after producing five points. “We’ve worked extremely hard since the first day of practice and like Julia always says, we just need to give 100 percent every game and good things will happen.”
The Tigers’ season isn’t over because for the first time since 2016, they will get the opportunity to play in the Open tournament. The Tigers will be the No. 11 seed and face No. 6 Westerly in the first round this week after the Bulldogs lost to Classical in the Division II final. Pilgrim is the final seed in the tournament and will face Division I champion and top-seeded La Salle.
Pilgrim needed 6 minutes, 49 seconds of the opening half to score their first bucket and it didn’t get much better for the Patriots. The Warwick side tied the game at 7 later in the half, but they never took the lead. Junior forward Nadine Ogni and sophomore guard Chanti Van Heyningen each scored a teamhigh five points. Hannah French produced a basket in both halves to add four points.
“We just wanted to control the tempo of the basketball game,” Gonzalez said. “Pilgrim is a good team that moves the ball well and executes well, but we were going to live or die with them shooting from the outside. We had to fight through this game, but – believe it or not – that is a normal game for us because we average 20-plus turnovers. Once they settled down and play Tolman basketball, this team is tough to beat.”
While the Patriots couldn’t make a shot in the opening seven minutes, the Tigers couldn’t hold on to the ball. Tolman committed 23 turnovers in the opening half and only led by one point (3-2) when Ogni scored Pilgrim’s first two points from the right wing.
Alysia Medeiros tied the game at 7 with a 3-pointer, but then the Tigers went on a 10-1 run over the final 4:48 to grab a lead they would never relinquish. Gonzalez said the biggest adjustment he made was moving AlAmir off the ball and allowing the speedy Jasmine Wilson (six points) to run the offense.
“A lot of us were getting frustrated because we weren’t getting specific foul calls, but once we all settled down and talked we were fine,” Al-Amir said. “The only thing that mattered was what we were doing inside the basketball court lines and that’s what we did to bring it home.”
The lead was just seven points midway through the second half when Santana, Wilson and Negron combined on a 7-0 run to stretch the lead out to 27-13 with just 6:07 left in the game. The Patriots broke a 5:04 scoreless streak with a hoop from Kailey Giarusso, but the Patriots simply didn’t have enough firepower to make a serious challenge late in the game.
The Tigers gamely battled in Division II for the previous two seasons before winning their second title in four seasons after going nearly four decades without producing any hardware.
“This title is a true testament to their hard work and dedication,” Gonzalez. “The kids bought into our system and they believed in us just as much as we believed in them.”
“It means so much to me that I walked into Tolman as a champion and I’m going to walk out of Tolman as a champion,” AlAmir said.
Follow Branden Mello on Twitter @Branden_Mello PILGRIM (26) Lexi Brown 0 0-2 0, Kailey Giarusso 1 1-3 3, Nadine Ogni 1 3-3 5, Alysia Medeiros 1 0-2 3, Francesca Maroni 1 0-2 2, Hannah French 3 0-3 6, Chantel Van Heyningen 1 2-2 5, Jayni Williams 0 2-2 2, totals 8 8-20 26.
TOLMAN (37) Julia Al-Amir 2 1-4 7, Amsatou Diagne 0 0-2 0, Maya Barbosa 1 0-0 2, Minelle Pagan 0 1-2 1, Tanya Santana 2 3-9 7, Tamara Negron 4 1-2 9, Jasmine Wilson 1 3-4 5, Victoria Percy 2 2-8 6, totals 12 11-25 37.
3-pointers – P,Medeiros, Van Heyningen; T, Al-Amir 2. Halftime – Tolman, 17-8.