Clutch hoops gives North title
TRENTON >> A game which looked like one Chrissy DiCindio would rather forget became one she will always remember.
The 6-foot-1 senior forward was sick and struggling as her West Windsor-Plainsboro North girls basketball team saw a 10-point lead late in the first quarter become a 15-point deficit midway through the third in Friday’s Mercer County Tournament final at the Sun National Bank Center.
DiCindio, the Northern Knights’ leading scorer had four points in the first half, all from the foul line. She could not get a shot to fall until she hit a foul-line jump shot with 3:44 left in the third quarter.
Adding foul trouble to her problems, the University of Pennsylvania-bound senior would only hit one more shot the rest of the game, but that was the most important one of all.
DiCindio hit a twisting, half-hook shot hard off the glass that found the bottom of the net with 4.9 seconds remaining and gave fourth-seeded WW-P North the lead to stay in a 47-44 win over second-seeded Ewing for the school’s first MCT basketball crown.
“Normally I do go to that move, but it wasn’t falling tonight,” DiCindio said. “Thank God that one did. It feels awesome to win this. It was such a team effort.”
DiCindio’s contributions may have ended up being bookmarks to an incredible run, but they were as important as anyone’s.
Herfirstbasketstoppeda15-0runby the Blue Devils, which came at the end of a 22-1 rally Ewing had put together after Jasmin Watson hit a 3-point field goal to give the Northern Knights a 2216 lead with six minutes left in the half.
From there, Blue Devils senior guard Denia Campbell got hot, connecting on 13 of her 16 points and three of her four 3-pointers during Ewing’s surge.
“I feel like we let down,” said Campbell, who came away with the game’s sportsmanship trophy. “We had a lot of momentum, then we let them back in.”
Building off the defensive intensity of 5-8 sophomore guard/forward Jordan Brown (12 rebounds, eight steals, seven points and four assists), WW-P North settled down in the third quarter, even after DiCindio scored to trim Ewing’s lead to 38-25, then picked up her fourth foul 15 seconds later.
When DiCindio went to the bench, Watson and Brown helped the Northern Knights close the quarter with a 10-0 run.
“I felt we needed to get this for our greatgroupofseniors,”Brownsaid.“We kept our heads up and put the pressure on (Ewing).”
A trey by 5-2 senior guard Ciahni Hunt with 4:05 left in the fourth quarter pulled WW-P North back as close as 42-39.
The three-point margin was where the game remained until 5-10 senior guard/forward Natalie Everett swished a 3-pointer from deep in the corner with 1:19 to go to tie the game at 44. That was the first time the game had been tied since DiCindiohitafreethrowwith49.6seconds left in the first half to knot the game at 23.
“I just let it fly,” Everett said. “It was crazy! Our whole mentality this game was ‘Don’t give up!’”
Like her teammates, DiCindio did not, and, after the Blue Devils missed a chance at the lead, she found the ball in her hands as the clock wound down.
“We run a one-minute drill where we’re not supposed to score until the last 10 seconds,” DiCindio said. “That really worked well.”
Most thought Watson, who led all scorers with 18 points and was named the game’s Most Valuable Player, would take the winning shot. Instead, DiCindio made her chance count.
After a timeout, Brown stole the inbound pass, was fouled and hit 1-of-2 free throws to leave Ewing only with a chance at a desperation heave to send the game to overtime. It didn’t happen as the Knights closed the game with a 24-6 run of their own.
“For a while, we had the pace, but we needed to be sharper in a game like this,” Blue Devils coach Mike Reynolds said. “(North) played very confident in the final four minutes.”
“As good as this group of seniors is, they had never beaten Notre Dame or Ewing before,” Northern Knights coach Bob Boyce said. “Then they go into this tournament and have to beat both of them to win.”
Watson 7-2-18, DiCindio 2-4-8, Everett 3-0-9, Hunt 2-0-5, Laresch 0-0-0, Garron 0-0-0, Russell 0-0-0, JoBrown 2-3-7.
16-9-47.
Amonu 2-1-5, Sexton 2-1-5, DCampbell 6-0-16, Grimes 3-0-6, KlPeterson 2-0-4, Lowe 1-4-6, MJackson 1-0-2. — 17-6-44. 4 (E).