NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – With three minutes left in the first half of Friday’s girls basketball game between Drury and Monument Mountain, the Blue Devils had a working margin of 23-15.
By the time the horn sounded to end the half, Drury’s cushion had ballooned to 17 points.
Jacinta Felix scored six points in a 9-0 run on her way to a 16-point night in Drury’s 56-24 win over the Spartans in Bucky Bullett Gymnasium.
Elise Daly scored 11 points, and Norah Wood and Lily Mirante each finished with eight as the Blue Devils evened their record at 1-1.
Much of Drury’s offense all night came from its defense, which forced 25 first-half turnovers – 16 in the second quarter alone.
“We have been transitioning to a transition team,” Felix said. “So it comes a lot from our defense being high pressure intensity, and then we got some nice transition looks. We kind of didn’t run a lot of plays. We were transitioning the whole game. That was our goal.”
Felix also passed out three assists and had a handful of swipes in the middle of Drury’s full-court pressure defense.
“I think everyone knows we’re going to go as Jacinta goes,” Drury coach Ian Downey said of the senior. “She’s our best defender. She’s our best ball-handler. She’s probably our best scorer. She gets the most steals.
“When she has an off-game, we’re probably going to have an off-game. Tonight was one of those nights. You saw, she was all over the place.”
The knockout run late in the second started with a free throw from Felix and ended with a bucket by Mirante to give Drury a 32-15 lead.
Monument Mountain coach Joe Valerio said the three-minute stretch was indicative of the Spartans’ problems in their first three games this winter.
“It boils down to a couple of things,” he said of his 0-3 squad. “It boils down to our focus and our attention to detail. There’s, a lot of times, critical moments. Our first game, it was against Belchertown. It was a four-point game for most of it, and we ended up losing by 11. And it mostly came down to we just aren’t focused enough when we need to be.
“We go through lapses. Even today, it was a seven-point game with two minutes left in the first half, and we ended up being down 17 at half. We just go through spells where we’re not focused enough, and I think that’s probably the biggest detriment we have right now.”
Jaziyah Forte scored nine points to lead Monument Mountain, which got six points and seven rebounds from Polly Geddes and eight boards from Ynes Bourdon-Nutsugah.
Drury rode the momentum from the end of the second quarter into the second half, scoring the first six points and outscoring the visitors 17-4 in the period to take a 49-19 lead.
By the end of the quarter, Downey was getting more and more time for his bench.
But, he said, the Blue Devils are so deep this winter that in the early stages of the season he cannot say for sure who is a starter and who is a reserve.
“I feel like I have the luxury this year that almost any girl I can put into any given situation,” Downey said. “It makes it really hard on me as a coach to decide who gets to play. But it’s a really great problem to have.
“Early in the season, girls are going to play a lot of minutes so we can see who we have, who works better together. It’s going to be a learning process for me, because you have some years where you have two or three girls penciled in, and you have no idea what to do. Now, I really have 10 to 11 girls who I really think can play. I just have to figure out what the best combinations are.”
Downey is particularly excited to have a number of bigs to choose from at any given time.
“Between Addisyn [Shepard], Elise [Daly] and Eva [Moser], we have three bigs that I feel I can rotate in and out,” he said. “It is nice to have height, because I’ve been in those seasons where we were facing height.
“Our league typically has some big girls. We have Belchertown on Friday, and their big is the best in our league, and, to control her, it’s going to take all three. It’s nice to have those options this year. … We have 15 [fouls] to throw at her, and it’s going to take all 15, I promise you.”
The Blue Devils had a game scheduled for Monday evening, but that contest was rescheduled to allow the team to focus on the funeral of former Drury standout Alison Felix, the sister of Jacinta.
It has been an emotional week for everyone connected to the program since Alison’s sudden death on Monday. After playing a second game this week, Jacinta expressed gratitude for the outpouring of support Drury’s fans have shown.
“It was huge,” she said. “A lot of people said they were proud of me for playing and it took guts. But it really wasn’t just me playing that game. It was everyone who came – all stepping up behind me. So it was really nice to see come together.”
More photos from this game to come.
