Foxborough girls punch ticket to D3 title game
Lisa Downs doesn’t smile very often during a game, but the Foxborough girls’ basketball coach had plenty of reasons to on Tuesday. Downs couldn’t help but beam when Kailey Sullivan went behind the back on a fast break and dished a laser pass to Camryn Collins for an easy layup in the third quarter.
Those connections epitomized a commanding performance from the top-seeded Warriors. They prevailed in a battle of reigning state champions, capturing a 65-34 win in a Division 3 semifinal against the fifth-seeded Spartans at UMass Boston’s Clark Athletic Center.
“It’s awesome,” Collins said. “I’m blessed to be here, same as last year. It’s very rare for a team to come out here and get the same thing. We dropped down a division, but we wanted to prove that we still have that same title.”
Foxborough (23-2) started the game on a 9-1 run, but while the guards struggled early, Addie Ruter took control. The 6-foot-3-inch junior’s combination of size and shortrange touch helped in a physical matchup with St. Mary’s junior Reese Matela.
Ruter hit an impressive, foul-drawing fadeaway jumper that sparked the traveling crowd and highlighted a 2815 first half for the Warriors. She scored 9 before the break and added three big blocks in help defense.
“To have a true center, it’s something that most teams don’t have, and if they have it, they’re not quite as talented as she is,” Downs said. “She’s an incredible part of our puzzle.”
Then the Collins-Sullivan duo exploded. First, Collins finished a putback layup off her own miss that drew a foul, then Sullivan sliced through the defense for a tough layup. Foxborough racked up 24 points in the third quarter, including the highlight-reel transition feed.
“We saw they were getting a little tired,” Downs said, “so we had to take advantage of that and really jump on it, because we like to control the tempo of the game, and we like a fast game.”
Collins, a Rider-bound senior guard, had 3 points at halftime. She scored 15 in the third quarter alone and finished with 20.
“For us, the third quarter’s really important,” she said. “My teammates did a lot for me in transition, we worked a lot on defense, and it turned into points.”
Sullivan added 13 points for the Warriors and Ruter ended with 11. Matela led the Spartans (19-7) with 9 points.
Foxborough returns to the Tsongas Center after winning the Division 2 championship last year and will face secondseeded Norwell. The Warriors have won every postseason game by at least 30 points in a dominant run fueled by their experience.
“Some of these girls have been here a lot, and so they’re comfortable with it,” Downs said. “They like the crowd, they like the atmosphere, and instead of them being intimidated, they kind of feed off it.”