Franklin Tech Girls Top Mount Everett in Holiday Tourney
TURNERS FALLS, Mass. – The Franklin Tech girls basketball team Thursday shut out Mount Everett for the final six minutes of the game to take a 29-22 win in the opening round of the Eagles Holiday Classic.
On a night when points were at a premium, Kaitlin Trudeau scored a game-high 10 to lead Franklin Tech, which moves on to Friday’s title game against Hopkins Academy, which won, 43-24, over Baystate Academy on Thursday afternoon.
Although Mount Everett was held off the board for most of the fourth quarter, it kept the hosts scoreless for the entire first quarter.
Mount Everett’s defense produced some of the only scoring opportunities in that frame as Hudah Nguy Nkulu scored in transition off a defensive rebound, Emma Goewey scored in transition off another rebound and Julia Devoti (team-high seven points) got to the line in transition after a Nguy Nkulo steal and made it 7-0 to end the quarter.
Franklin found its footing offensively in the second, outscoring its guests, 19-4 to take an eight-point lead into half-time.
After weathering a 12-1 run to end the first half, Mount Everett was able to regroup and use a 7-0 run in the third to get within four points at 22-18.
“We won the first and third quarters, and, in the end, you need to win all quarters,” Mount Everett coach Josh King said. “That’s the hard part. We have to do a better job of taking care of the basketball.
“That’s the frustrating part. Almost everyone returned from last year. We’re missing a few key pieces here or there, but the majority of the girls on the court have played throughout their high school careers. You’ve just got to find that confidence in ourselves as we’re playing. … We did the little things we had to do to get ourselves back in it, and then, I think we just ran out of gas and wind.”
Devoti started the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer off an assist from Maggy Sarnacki, and moments later, Makayla Carpenter hit a free throw to tie the game at 22-22.
But Franklin Tech turned up its defensive pressure down the stretch, forcing turnovers out of its press and getting buckets from Emily Ryan, Trudeau and Cordelia Guerin to retake the lead for good.
“Against a zone or a press or anything, they’ve just got to pass the ball,” King said. “We kept trying to go to the same spot that the pass just came from. So the defense didn’t have to do any movement. And then, when we tried to lob it over, we probably missed, I’d say, 15 over-the-head passes that just don’t work in basketball.
“Like I said, we’ve just got to do a little better job next time, do a little better job finishing, and we’ll be alright.”
Mount Everett (0-1) gets its first chance to turn things around on Friday afternoon when it takes on Baystate Academy in the tournament’s consolation game.