Grosse Pointe North falls to Royal Oak in regionals
As if four firsthalf 3-pointers hadn’t already made it obvious that Royal Oak junior Lucy Freytag was on her game Monday night against Grosse Pointe North, her long-range triple — and one — with 2:58 remaining all but convinced the crowd that she was in a groove.
The four-point play gave the Ravens a five-point lead and helped them fend off a feisty Norsemen squad in a Division 1 regional semifinal, 53-48, giving Royal Oak its firstever regional playoff victory.
“I just felt confident. I felt open and I was like, ‘I’ve got to shoot it,’ ” Freytag said of her 23-foot clutch shot. “I felt like (that shot) kind of got us going and we were able to build off of it in a way. We came together and kept fighting.”
The Norsemen kept fighting as well, scoring seven of the next nine points to tie the game at 48. Senior Jenna Winowiecki knocked down a pair of free throws and sophomore Eva Borowski hit a 3-pointer and had a putback to tie the game.
But the Ravens answered, as senior Anna Waterstredt drove to the basket to regain the lead for her team. After a stop on the defensive end, junior Maddie Lawrence scored a layup of her own with 24.6 seconds remaining and senior Emmy Walden hit a free throw with just seconds remaining to seal the win.
“We answered (tonight),” Royal Oak head coach Brian Sopata said after the game. “All season, we’ve been able to do that, especially in this run we’ve had. Multiple times, when we’ve been down, even in this fourth quarter, we haven’t wavered, even when we gave up that lead tonight. We didn’t let that deter us. We kept getting after it and that has been a credit to our players and what we’ve tried to instill since Day 1. Every day, we’re working for the next play. They hear that from me all the time and it’s wonderful when it happens.”
Royal Oak fell behind, 8-0, in the game’s first three minutes, only to score the next seven points to get right back into the game. Freytag hit a pair of 3 pointers and had eight of her team-high 23 points in the first quarter, helping her team to a 14-12 lead after one.
Winowiecki, who finished with a game-high 25 points for North, hit three 3-pointers in the second quarter alone to help pull her team even with the Ravens at halftime. She then scored nine more in the third to help stake her team to a 38-35 lead heading into the fourth. Included in that