Hoosac Girls Run Away With Game in Second Quarter
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- The only thing that really separated the Hoosac Valley and Drury girls basketball teams on Friday night was one quarter of play.
But what a quarter it was.
Hoosac forced 13 second-quarter turnovers to erase a five-point deficit on the way to a 66-39 win in Bucky Bullet Gymnasium.
Kailynne Frederick scored a game-high 19 points and grabbed a team-high six rebounds as the Hurricanes improved to 7-1 with their fifth straight win.
Hoosac had a field day in the second quarter, with Fallon Field scoring nine of her 11 points and Ellie Field teaming up with Frederick to ratchet up the pressure from the Hurricanes' press.
"Ellie does a great job," Wojcik said. "Both our 5s, her and Kailynne Frederick do a great job in the middle of that press. They get a lot of deflections, a lot of tips. Ellie's been doing that all season long."
Frederick gave Hoosac the lead early in the second. First, she knocked down a 3-pointer off a feed from Alie Mendel to make it 13-13. Then, after a turnover out of the press, Frederick scored a bucket in the paint to make it 15-13.
Drury hung in for a couple of possessions, taking a one-point lead on a conventional three-point play by Jenna Moulton and tying it for a final time on a Sarah Lamarre free throw to make it 17-17.
But Hoosac went on a 15-0 run to half-time to take control of the game for good.
Drury (4-3) led throughout the first quarter and had a 13-8 edge going into the second. And in the second half, the Blue Devils put up a good fight, limiting their giveaways and losing the third quarter by a margin of just 23-17.
Hoosac coach Ron Wojcik was happy to get the road win but concerned about the Hurricanes' inability to deliver the knockout blow.
"I praised them for the gut check when Drury started off the game hard and we took the punch," Wojcik said. "The place was rocking, the crowd was into it. Then we made a great run on them in the second quarter.
"In the third quarter, I thought we put it into cruise control a little bit and got careless. I said, 'Our goal is the end of the season. And at the end of the season, you can't be committing the bad fouls, the lazy passes, those types of things against the really good teams going into the tournament."
Drury was hampered in the second quarter when point guard Molly Moulton drew her third personal foul with 6 minutes, 52 seconds left until half-time.
"When you lose your 1, your experienced senior point guard ... it makes it tough to run an offense," Drury coach Brian Flagg said. "And Hoosac Valley's well coached and very experienced. They smelled blood. 'The point guard's not in, we're going after the ball.' And they did a good job of it."
Drury was led by Kaitlyn Toomey with 11 points and 12 rebounds. Jenna Moulton scored 10, and Olivia Carlson scored nine to go with 11 boards.
Although Flagg was disappointed that the Blue Devils succumbed to the pressure, he knew there was no shame in losing to the three-time defending Western Massachusetts champions, and there were plenty of positives to take away from the Blue Devils' effort on Friday.
"We talk all the time about three words: attitude, effort and enthusiasm," Flagg said. "You're going to win games by 25. You're going to lose games by 25. But what's important is that we apply the same principles, whether we win or whether we lose: positive attitude, always 100 percent effort and 100 percent enthusiasm. If you do those things, the wins will come.
"And I'm very proud that we played all the way to the buzzer, nobody hung their heads and we battled all the way to the end. That's all you can ask from kids."