Sports: East Lyme girls lose, 71-69, in overtime to Wethersfield in Class L quarters
Wethersfield rallies from 13 back to beat East Lyme in quarters
Wethersfield — With any luck, Sal Fiorillo will find a way to bottle this for next season, with every last member of his roster returning for another crack.
“I can't be more proud to be the head basketball coach of the East Lyme High School girls,” Fiorillo said Thursday night following a season-ending defeat in overtime. “They played with passion, enthusiasm, they gave me everything they had tonight.
“From where we were Thanksgiving Day or whenever we started, this is a different group. … We've started to love each other. That's something I've been reaching for the two years I've been here.”
East Lyme, which scored 41 and 48 points, respectively, in the first two rounds of the Class L state tournament, came out with the gas pedal to the floor boards in the quarterfinal-round game against Wethersfield, turning in one of its highest scoring games of the season.
No. 10 Wethersfield beat the No. 15 Vikings 71-69, with sophomore Isabella Samse scoring off an East Lyme turnover with 1 minute, 1 second remaining to put the Eagles ahead for good.
East Lyme missed shots its next two trips down the floor before another Wethersfield sophomore, Alice Kelly, hit one free throw with 3.3 seconds to go for a two-point lead. That gave East Lyme one final timeout and three seconds to get a shot off, but the attempt was blocked at the buzzer, advancing the Eagles to Monday's semifinals against either No. 3 Farmington or No. 6 Woodstock Academy.
“Multiple times this year, the way we practice, the way we play is real up-tempo and sort of energy and cha-
os,” Wethersfield coach Jeff Russell said of the game's torrid pace on offense. “It's not even a word, but we've out-chaosed teams late in the game this year. Some teams have been able to get us, but we're on the right side of it more often than not.”
Wethersfield (17-7), which competes in the Central Connecticut Conference, trailed by 13 in the second quarter, 35-22 on a 3-pointer by East Lyme's Sophie Dubreuil, and 37-31 at halftime. But the Eagles had nine 3-point field goals in the first half to keep them in the game and 15 overall.
Wethersfield took its first lead of the game with 7.1 seconds remaining in the third quarter on a drive by Samse in the midst of a 17-2 run spanning the third and fourth quarters which brought the Eagles from a 47-38 deficit to a 55-49 lead.
East Lyme led 62-61 on a jump shot by Nadia Tarhini assisted by Katie Durkee with about two minutes remaining, with the teams trading free throws until the score was tied at 63 following regulation.
East Lyme (15-9) took the first lead of overtime on a jump shot by Julia Fenn, who got the roll, and the teams exchanged the lead five times through the four-minute overtime.
East Lyme's last lead came when Megan Bauman hit both ends of a one-and-one with 1:30 to play to give the Vikings a 69-68 edge.
Tarhini finished with 20 points for East Lyme, Dubreuil 18, Bauman 14 and Fenn 10. The Vikings added seven 3-pointer, a combined total of 22 for the game.
“I think we played really well as a team. Everybody filled their role,” said Bauman of an East Lyme team which has been missing pieces on and off all season due for a variety of reasons, including a severe ankle sprain to Dubreuil that kept her out of the Eastern Connecticut Conference tournament.
“They made 15 3s … I don't think they do that every night. Some of their 3s, they killed us. It just came down to a few plays that we didn't execute. We missed some shots. It was a great game by us and by them,” Bauman said.
The good news for Fiorillo: Thursday night's starters included junior captains Bauman and Durkee and sophomores Dubreuil, Fenn and Tarhini, the 6-foot-2 center. And they didn't miss an awful lot Thursday.
“During the Holy Cross game (4841 win in the second round), something clicked, the light went on,” said Fiorillo, an East Lyme graduate who returned to coach the Vikings after 10 years as assistant coach at Morgan. “I told them, 'Don't be sad. Be disappointed, but don't be sad. You guys gave me everything you had tonight.'” v.fulkerson@theday.com