Garnet Raiders respond to rally
Three Raiders vets help rally team from 12-point hole
Colonie’s Aliyah Wright and her senior teammates help squad recover from 12-point deficit in sectional victory over Guilderland.
Seconds after Colonie committed its seventh turnover of the second quarter, Guilderland guard Graci Serravillo drained a 3-pointer to put her team up 12 points with one minute to go in the first half of their Class A A girls’ basketball quarterfinal.
That sequence definitely did not sit well with Colonie senior starters Aliyah Wright, Alivia Paeglow and Kyara Triblet.
“I think with a lot of us, especially the three of us that are senior starters, we just did not want to go home. The light came on,” Wright said. “We just knew we had to fight.”
Colonie scored seven points in the final 54 seconds of the first half and relied heavily on its senior starting threesome to extricate the team from danger as the fourth-seeded Garnet Raiders rallied to beat the Lady Dutch 59-54 at Shenendehowa High School.
Colonie (15-6), the 2018 champion, overcame a sloppy first half to secure a berth in the semifinals Wednesday at Hudson Valley Community College.
The Garnet Raiders turned the ball over 15 times overall, but 11 of those miscues came in the first half as the Lady Dutch (13-8) had the defending champions rattled.
“They play fast and kind of chaotic,” Wright said of the Lady Dutch. “We knew if we focused on what we needed
to do, and not playing into their game, we would be fine.”
“That is exactly what we said we didn’t want to do: We didn’t want to get caught up in that chaos game,” Colonie coach Heather Dibiase said. “In the first half, we turned the ball over a lot and had trouble breaking their press. When we did break it, we had layups.”
In the second half, Colonie settled down and pounded the ball inside to Paeglow (16 points, seven rebounds) and junior Makayla Blake (eight points, 12 rebounds) for positive results. That duo combined to score 16 points after intermission.
“I know she wants the ball and how strong she is and the way she finishes,” Wright said of Paeglow. “She is somebody I always look for down low.”
Guilderland opened up a 46-39 lead with 5:35 left when sophomore Valencia Fontenelle-posson scored on a jumper to reach the 1,000-point plateau for her threeyear varsity career.
Colonie responded with a 10-0 run, the last two points coming when Guilderland coach Chuck Mack was assessed a technical foul with 2:59 left.
The Garnet Raiders finished the game by going 10-for-10 from the foul line to seal the victory.
“We said in the locker room at halftime that this wouldn’t be our last game,” Dibiase said. “Alivia was in foul trouble in the first half, but she came out and had some big baskets for us in the second half. The plan was to go inside to her when she came back into the game and they had a tough time stopping her.”
Guilderland also had a difficult time shooting the ball, finishing 18for-68 (26.5 percent) from the field.
Wright led the way for Colonie with 19 points, four rebounds, three assists and three steals. Triblet delivered 14 points and five rebounds.
By cutting down on its turnovers, Colonie managed to overcome a difficult night shooting as the Garnet Raiders went 19-for-53 (35.8 percent).
Serravillo paced Guilderland with 16 points, Fontenelle-posson added 14 points, 12 rebounds and five steals and Grace Mcferran chipped in with 12 points.