Final three minutes cost Northmen
NORTH SMITHFIELD — For the first 29 minutes of Thursday night’s Division III semifinal, the No. 1 North Smithfield girls basketball team executed its gameplan.
The only problem is a basketball game is 32 minutes and defending Division III champion Mount Pleasant absolutely dominated the final three minutes to crush the Northmen’s title dreams.
North Smithfield had the ball with a four point lead at the three-minute mark when Davonna Jackley created a turnover – a theme of the final frantic minutes – and produced a three-point play to close the gap to one. The Kilties continued to create turnovers and score and transition and by the time the final buzzer sounded at Lovett Gymnasium, the visitors had secured a 53-48 come-from-behind victory to earn a spot in Sunday’s title game.
“We’ve made it farther than we’ve made it the past eight years and to be at home in the semifinals is great, but to be in the semifinals against a team that’s won
before scares the kids,” NS coach Arianna Stanton said. “Even when we were up the whole game, we were just playing so panicked and I kept saying ‘Calm down, you’re in control of this game right now.’ It 100 percent sped up on them late in the game.”
North Smithfield (9-2 Division III) started the season with a home defeat to Woonsocket and ended the truncated campaign with a disappointing loss to the Kilties. Senior Skylah Sullivan scored a team-high 16 points, including eight in the third quarter, while Calla Puccetti scored 12 points and played all 32 minutes. Laura Matchett scored nine points, but missed half of the second half because she picked up her fourth foul early in the third quarter.
Matchett’s free throw late in the half was the only point the home side scored in the final four minutes of the season. NS committed six of their 18 turnovers in the final five minutes.
“It’s little things that we did wrong against their pressure that hurt us,” Stanton said. “We were right there to win the game. We always say in 32 minutes of basketball something can happen in 30 seconds that changes the result of the game. They played hard for almost all of the game, but at the end they just played scared. They weren’t used to the situation and that happened.”
Mount Pleasant, which defeated Woonsocket in last season’s title game, will play No. 1 Mt. Hope in Sunday’s title game at noon at Rhode Island College. The Kilties trailed Thursday’s game for most of the second quarter and the first 14 minutes of the second half before Kelsey Hatch, Francheska Contreras and Jackley took over the game.
Contreras, who scored 12 points in the third quarter to keep the road side within striking distance, scored a game-high 21 points, while Amya Perry hit a 3-pointer in each of the first three quarters to score 12 points. Hatch added 11.
“These girls have it within them to play like that defensively because they’re patient but also aggressive,” Mount Pleasant coach Zach Pinto said. “We kind of preach that nice balance. We got some transition points and that’s just the kind of team we are because we struggle in the half court, but if we lock down on defense like we did at the end, we get some easy hoops.”
The Kilties were the better team for most of the first quarter, but they only went into the second quarter with a one-point advantage because Puccetti and Sullivan each scored four points. Puccetti and Matchett controlled the second quarter to give the Northmen a three-point lead at the break, but the junior center picked up her third foul in the quarter.
Matchett accidentally tripped a Kiltie early in the third quarter four her fourth foul, but the Northmen were picked up in the paint by Sam Ledger and Sullivan. The Nortmen, after a Megan Masi 3-pointer, led by seven points in the quarter before going into the fourth up by two. The advantage was four in the final three minutes when the Kilties turned up the defensive pressure and knocked the Northmen out of the playoffs.