Hoosac Girls Survive Monument's Upset Bid on Senior Night

CHESHIRE, Mass. -- With six minutes, 19 seconds remaining in the game Thursday evening, the Monument Mountain girls basketball team tied Hoosac Valley at 36 to put the Spartans back in the game after trailing by 12 at half-time.

 

The Hurricanes were able to hold on for a 52-48 win on senior night, but Monument stayed in it with them right through the end.

 

 “It wasn’t a great game for us tonight,” Hoosac coach Ron Wojick said. “I give credit to Monument, they did a great job.”

 

With 16 seconds to go on the clock the Spartans trailed by one point after hitting two shots from the line; Hoosac inbounded the ball and pushed it up court. Sophomore Fallon Field drove to the basket for a layup making the score 51-48 and Hoosac quickly called a timeout.

 

“They were mostly strategy timeouts,” Wojick said about the final minutes of the game. “We talked about if we scored what we were going back to on defense, trying to get it inside to Rosse if we could, but they did a good job with their size taking her away so we relied more on the threes than we would probably like to, fortunately a couple of them went in.”

 

Hoosac was sent to the line two more times after the Spartans got their seventh team foul; with 11 seconds remaining Emily Rosse was fouled on an inbound pass, but she missed. Monument attempted a 3-pointer, but it hit the front of the rim and Field received the outlet pass and was fouled. She sank her first one and missed the second to leave the final score at 52-48.

 

Both teams have qualified for the tournament; Hoosac Valley finished first in the Northern Division and is looking to bring home another Western Mass. title. The seeds and brackets will be released Saturday afternoon.

 

“We clinched the Northern Division, which was our first goal,” Wojick said. “It’s looking like we will get a good ranking, but we need to clean up some things offensively and defensively and we will take the next week to do that.”

 

Field finished with 23 points for Hoosac, Madi Ryan had 11, and Rosse had 9.

 

For Monument, Sarah Sullivan had 15, Anika Helmice had 13, and Vanessa Troiano had 11.