Bishop Foley tops Westfield Prep for first-ever regional title
The gymnasium at Madison Heights Bishop Foley was rocking Wednesday night. The speakers were blasting some of Queen’s greatest hits, including “Another One Bites the Dust” and “We are the Champions.”
And for good reason.
For the first time in school history, the girls basketball team captured a regional championship. The host Ventures used a pair of second-half runs to pull away from Redford Westfield Prep, 76-60, to win a Division 3 regional championship.
“This is a goal we set at the beginning of the year,” Bishop Foley head coach Ray Joseph said. “We wanted to be conference champs, district champs and be the first team in school history to win regionals. (This week) we set our sights on being the first team to win a regional. We practiced really hard, everybody was upbeat and tonight we were unselfish and won this as a team.”
The Ventures led pretty much from start to finish, leading by as many as 10 points in the first half as it entered the intermission with a 29-23 lead. Westfield Prep used a 7-0 run early in the third to cut the lead to one, at 3130. But Foley scored the next 10 points and 16 of 21 to take a 4735 lead with just a second remaining in the third quarter. Junior Teresa Weis, sophomores Alyssa Samartino and Lauren Bartkiewicz and freshman Ryan Moorer accounted for all the points during the run.
Westfield Prep would cut the lead to nine points, 51-42, in the opening minute of the fourth. But that’s when the Ventures began to break the Warriors press. And the floodgates opened up.
Moorer scored six points during an 8-0 run which built the lead to 17 points and the Ventures put together a second 8-0 run just minutes later, with Samartino, Weis and junior Melanie Moore teaming up to help their team expand its lead to 67-46 with just
more than three minutes to play.
“In that fourth quarter we were telling the girls that we had to be very disciplined with the basketball and move the ball around,” Joseph said. “If we do that the defense is going to break down and we would have good looks at the basket. And that’s what we did.”
Samartino was the catalyst on the break, continually taking the ball to the basket or dishing off to an open teammate. She finished with 11 points, including six in the fourth quarter, all on the fast break.
“They just kept leaving gaps open and I kept penetrating,” she said. “As long as I could get to the hoop I knew I would get fouled. I knew we didn’t need to force our shots, so we just kept moving the ball, waiting for the open shot. And eventually they opened up.”
Moore finished with a team-high 25 points. After the game, Moore and senior Angelina Younis climbed a ladder and placed a 2021 sticker under the regional championships column on the girls basketball banner — the first of its kind.
“We told these girls from the onset that (Westfield Prep) was quick and fast and that we could not take them for granted,” said Joseph, whose team improved to 10-5 with the victory. “They’re like an AAU team. They’re athletic. We beat a very good team.”
Weis finished with 15 points, Moore had 12 and sophomore Magda Berisha added six for the Ventures, who now advances to face Hemlock (13-8) in a Division 3 state quarterfinal game. It will be played Monday at New Lothrop High School.
Westfield Prep (9-5) was led by Shamya Reid, who scored a game-high 26 points in the loss.