St. Mary’s Ryken girls basketball falls at Seton game
Roadrunners upend Knights in WCAC clash
Following a quick, promising start to its first road conference game of the season, the St. Mary’s Ryken High School girls basketball team suffered through two prolonged droughts and eventually ended up with a 55-50 setback at Elizabeth Seton High School last Wednesday, Jan. 19, in a Washington Catholic Athletic Conference contest.
Ryken (6-3 overall, 0-3 in the WCAC) actually scored the game’s first four points in just over a minute, but the Knights’ quick burst from the blocks would soon be followed by a serious drought. Seton (3-5, 1-2) countered with a 13-0 run in the first quarter and then finished the second with an 11-0 run to forge a commanding 34-17 halftime advantage.
“We had a few lapses tonight and they were able to take advantage of it,” said St. Mary’s Ryken girls basketball coach Toyja Somerville. “At halftime we addressed that and I thought the girls played harder in the second half. We had a couple of good chances to get closer, but we just missed on a couple of them.”
St. Mary’s Ryken senior guard
Carine Pinkney opened the game by forcing a turnover then going in for an uncontested layup. Less than a minute later the Knights owned a 4-0 lead, but that would actually be their biggest advantage of the contest. When the Roadrunners countered with a 13-0 run, Seton doggedly retained the lead over the last 25 minutes.
“When we were down [17] at halftime, we talked about coming out and playing with more energy and more intensity,” said Pinkney, who has narrowed her college choices down to two schools. “We
played much better defense in the fourth quarter. We kept getting closer, but we could not seem to get the buckets we needed to go ahead.”
Ryken faced a genuine uphill climb departing the locker room at the intermission trailing by 17 points, but the Knights hardly showed signs of surrendering. On two different occasions in the third quarter St. Mary’s Ryken trimmed the deficit to nine points. The Roadrunners owned a 53-37 lead with 6:30 remaining courtesy of a three-pointer from Riley James, but it was the Knights’ defense that dominated from that stage.
Pinkney scored a pair of baskets then Soleil Kennedy connected on a threepoint field goal to trim the Knights’ deficit to 53-47. A pair of free throws from Destiny Towns and another from Mekhia Chase got the visitors within three at 5350, but Seton’s Regina Walton ended the drama with a pair of free throws with 8.4 seconds remaining ending a St. Mary’s Ryken 13-0 run over the previous six-plus minutes.
“We just fell too far behind,” Pinkney said. “I think we started off so fast that we
might have taken them a little too lightly. I thought we played really good defense in the fourth quarter. We just dug ourselves too big of a hole.”