Mounties enter playoffs with home defeat
WOONSOCKET — The main reasons the Mount St. Charles girls basketball team won six Division III games – 3-point shooting and a suffocating full-court press – were on full display in Wednesday night's nonleague clash with winless Pilgrim.
And the main reasons the Mounties lost a pair of games – poor shooting in the paint and poor defensive rebounding – were also apparent. After a sloppy opening quarter, the Mounties used the 3-pointer shooting of Mallory Mongean and Alexis Robillard to tie the game going into the final quarter.
That's when Mount's offensive issues in the paint proved to be their undoing. Lauren Cunanan made her team's only field goal in the final quarter, as Gianna Ramos outscored the Mounties by herself in the final eight minutes of the D-II Patriots' 36-34 victory.
“We wanted to play this game like any other game, but we weren't ready to play at the beginning of the game and it's tough to dig yourself out of a hole,” Mount coach Jack Madden said. “When you have a young team, and this is a young team other than Lauren, the inexperience equals inconsistency. We missed too many free throws and they deserved to win. We didn't deserve to win with the way we threw the ball away 15, 17 times.”
Mount St. Charles (7-4, 6-2 Division III) was expecting to play Hope in an expanded Division III playoff, but the Blue Wave aren't able to compete this weekend, so the Mounties now turn their attention to a different Providence school. The Mounties will travel to No. 2 Mount Pleasant in the D-III quarterfinals early next week.
The Kilties, who suffered losses to North Smithfield and Mt. Hope, are led by senior wing Francheska Contreras and Jasmine Garcia.
“We're going to have to play a heck of a lot better, otherwise we're going to be in a lot of trouble,” Madden said. “A game like this where we're struggling to score, that's where [injured all-division guard Talia] Fernandes comes in because she gets to the basket and creates her own shot. Not have her hurts, but we still have plenty of kids who work hard and can score.”
Pilgrim (1-9, 0-9 Division II) received three 3-pointers and a team-high nine points from Faith Meade, while Rams and Kelsey Burr each scored six points. In a low-scoring first quarter, the Patriots scored the quarter's final five points to grab a 7-4 lead. The lead remained at three at halftime before the Mounties rode the play of Emma Roberts (10 points), Mongean (10 points) and Robillard (nine points) to take a three-point lead in the third quarter.
The Patriots tied the game at the end of the third quarter, but they were assessed a technical foul seconds into the final quarter because they had six players on the court. Mount missed both free throws, which proved to be foreshadowing because the home side couldn't buy a basket. The Patriots used four points from Ramos to ride back down Route 146 with a satisfying win to end a frustrating season.