LENOX, Mass. -- With one minute left, the visiting team rallying and the Lenox girls basketball team holding on to a two-possession lead, the Millionaires sent a seventh-grader to the foul line to try to ice the game.
That is just the way Lenox coach Mike Nykorchuck wanted it.
“Absolutely,” he said after Lenox held on for a 43-33 win over Mount Greylock. “She’s as cool as ice.”
“She” is Grace Wigington, who made both those foul shots to put her team up, 40-33, and stop an 8-2 run for the Mounties.
The mid-season call-up from the junior varsity finished with nine points -- six in the fourth quarter -- as Lenox stopped an eight-game losing streak and started a critical week with a Berkshire County South Division win.
Wigington’s performance was just one example of how Lenox’s youth will be key if the Millioaires (3-10) manage to make a run at the post-season via the MIAA’s Sullivan Rule, which enables a Division 4 team like Lenox to qualify for the Western Mass sectional by earning a .500 record against other D4 teams on its schedule.
“We had nine, nine and 10 out of two ninth-graders and a seventh-grader, that’s not too bad,” Nykorchuck said, referring to freshman Sophie Patella’s 10 points and the nine apiece from Wiggington and ninth-grader Tabor Paul.
“[Wigington] has been up with me for about two weeks now, and she’s cool as a cucumber. I want the ball in her hands. I hesitated bringing her up early in the year because I didn’t want to throw her out against Hoosac and Pittsfield and Wahconah. But she’s a big part of this team, and she’s not afraid to take a big shot.”
With about five minutes left in the fourth, Wigington put back a rebound in transition to make it 36-25, giving Lenox its second 11-point margin in the low-scoring contest.
That woke up Mount Greylock’s offense.
Delaney Babcock scored two of her game-high 11 points to get it back to single digits. Two possessions later, Maddy Ross set up Maddie Albert for a 3-pointer to make it a six-point game.
Wigington answered with a deep 2 to put Lenox up, 38-30, with 2:40 on the clock.
Mount Greylock’s Autumn Delorey hit a foul shot, and Babcock put back back an offensive rebound to make it 38-33 with about 1:30 left.
Wigington went to the line with 54 seconds left and made both. Anna Najimy converted an assist from Nicole Gamberoni (six points, seven rebounds, two blocks), and Mia Giardina closed the scoring with a free throw with 5.9 seconds on the clock.
Points were hard to come by all night, except for a four-minute stretch to open the second quarter, when Lenox scored 10 straight to take a 19-8 lead on a pair of Patella free throws.
“What was working for us was we stayed under control, we took our time and we ran our sets,” Nykorchuck said of that stretch. “In the second half, we got a little too helter-skelter. We had some unforced turnovers. But that second quarter, they were more composed, they were catching and looking at the basket and looking for cutters.”
That stretch to open the second was part of a 14-0 run that started late in the first quarter and really was the difference in what otherwise was a defensive slugfest.
“It’s a pretty even game with both teams struggling to try to find wins,” Mount Greylock coach John Jacobbe said. “Their shots fell and ours didn’t, especially in the second quarter.
“We had trouble scoring, again, and we’ve got to get better at scoring. Someone has to set up and make some jumpshots for us. Tonight, we struggled. We made some, but it took a while to get going.”
Ciera Schwarzer led the Mounties with 17 rebounds, a number only surpassed by Patella’s 20 caroms for Lenox.
“We pick a player of the game every game, and I let my two injured players pick it,” Nykorchuck said. “We have a poster we hand out. And they picked Sophie for the way she played with four fouls coming down the stretch.
“She is one of the few players I see who always remains vertical. I don’t mind playing her with four fouls because she’s one of the few people who can be effective and continue to play. She still gets rebounds, she still contests shots, and not many players can do that with four fouls for a whole quarter.”
Lenox is on the road in Holyoke against Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter before coming home to face Frontier on Friday.
“Our goal this week was to go 3-0, and this was definitely a tough start,” Nykorchuck said. “We go down to play the charter school and Frontier and then Lee [in Lee on Monday]. We’re hoping to put together four games in a row.
“With the Sullivan Rule, if we beat the charter school and Lee one of the times, we’re in the tournament. And I like our chances in the tournament.”
To make the D3 tournament, Mount Greylock (5-8) has to go 5-2 in its last seven, starting Thursday night at Drury.
