Blunt scores 1,000th point as Pennington advances to state final
PENNINGTON >> Taylor Blunt may not have received the same in-game fanfare that her Pennington School teammate Leah Johnson did when she scored her 1,000th-point six days earlier, but Blunt was not complaining.
In fact, the junior transfer was not even sure at first when she also reached the milestone Monday. The game was too tight at the time to worry about such things.
However, with Blunt and Johnson turning up their games in the second half, the second-seeded Red Raiders were able to outdistance the third-seeded Lawrenceville School, 64-52, to earn a return trip to the NJSIAA Prep A final.
Defending champion Pennington (20-4) will have to travel to top-seeded Blair Academy for the title game after the Bucs (17-7) defeated fifth-seeded Kent Place, 75-49. The game is listed to be played Wednesday, but with a bad weather forecast in the mix, may be moved to a different date after both teams return from the Independent Schools National Championship, which will be held in Mooresville, N.C. Feb. 22-24.
“I didn’t realize when I got it,” Blunt said of surpassing 1,000 points. “I just kept playing. But I was thinking, ‘Why is everyone cheering so loud, all I did was make a foul shot?’”
That event came in the middle of the third quarter as Blunt drained the second of two free throws to pull the home team within a basket after trailing by five points early in the half. When Blunt came up with a steal and went coast-tocoast for a layup 16 seconds later, she expected the fanfare a little more since it tied the game.
Blunt and the Red Raiders fans were even more excited with just under three minutes remaining in the third quarter when the 5-foot-9 guard/forward buried a long-range 3-point field goal to give the home side a 35-32 lead.
Victoria Dugan’s more traditional three-point play and a pair of foul shots by Heaven Figueroa kept the Big Red in the lead, 37-36, a minute later, but when Blunt bombed a 3 from even deeper with 1:04 to go in the third, it put Pennington in the lead to stay.
“Lawrenceville came out hard and played with intensity throughout,” Blunt said. “We came out slow in the first half, so I wasn’t thinking about how far I was from 1,000. I was focused on the game.”
Blunt, who actually became the Red Raiders’ third girl to surpass the milestone along with Johnson and fellow transfer Diamond Christian (who sat out Monday’s game), was so locked in that she led all players with 30 points and six steals. Fourteen of those points came in the third quarter. Eleven more came in the first quarter to help Pennington outscore L’ville, 13-9.
“We played teams like that in a tournament at Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts over the weekend, but it’s still a little shocking when you learn a team can play inside and out,” Big Red 5-8 junior forward Victoria Dugan said. “I still thought we scrambled well on defense. We just didn’t execute as well as we could have down the stretch.”
With Johnson adding 18 points (11 in the fourth quarter), 16 rebounds and four blocked shots, Pennington was able to pull away despite a 20-point game from Lawrenceville junior guard Heaven Figueroa and eight more points from Dugan. LAWRENCEVILLE (52)
Figueroa 6-6-20, Dugan 3-2-8, Molgat 2-5-7, Murray 0-0-0, Gillen 2-0-4, Bunnell 0-0-0, Balewitz 2-0-4, Hemenes 2-3-7. Totals — 17-16-52. PENNINGTON (64)
LJohnson 5-8-18, Lucchesi 2-2-7, EGarry 0-0-0, Blunt 8-8-30, Makela 0-0-0, Kiefer 0-3-3, SKavulich 0-0-0, Kramli 2-1-6. Totals — 17-22-64.
L’ville (13-12) 9 17 11 15 — 52 Pennington(20-4) 13 10 21 20 — 64 3-point goals — Figueroa 2 (L), Lucchesi, Blunt 6, Kramli (P).