PITTSFIELD, Mass. – The Taconic girls basketball team Monday used an 18-0 second-quarter run to break open a tight ballgame en route to a 57-30 win over Mount Greylock in the quarter-finals of the Western Massachusetts Class C tournament.
“I thought we pushed up our defensive pressure a little bit,” Taconic coach Matt Mickle said. “We extended and started scoring off it.
“I thought we created turnovers early. We just weren’t putting it in the hoop. We definitely pushed it out a little bit and created some more chaos and got some easy hoops.”
Ahliya Phillips, who finished with a game-high 20 points, scored twice in transition during the decisive run.
It started with a 3-pointer from Alex Hudson to make it 16-12 and ended with 30 seconds left in the half when Serynity Moorer scored in the post to give Taconic a 31-12 lead.
It was 31-15 at half-time after the Mounties’ Jackie Brannan converted an and-one at the buzzer.
But seventh-seeded Mount Greylock never got closer despite playing a solid third quarter.
“The first and third quarters are the way we want to play,” Mount Greylock coach John Jacobbe said. “We’ve got to put it together for four quarters.
“The second quarter, we had trouble protecting the ball and gave them some easy buckets off turnovers. But going into half-time, we were only down 16, so our goal was to get it to single digits.”
Taconic (10-9) took a 21-point lead at the end of the third when Madison Winn set up Phillips for a bucket to make it 45-24 with 40 seconds left in the period.
Then the hosts rolled out to a 10-0 run to start the fourth quarter to put the game away. Winn and Jaelynn Walker each had a 3-pointer during that stretch.
Walker and Brenna McNeice each scored seven points for Taconic.
Mount Greylock got 11 points from Charlotte Coody and seven from Brannan.
The Mounties (4-14) will learn on Wednesday who they will face in their regular season finale.
Taconic moves on to Wednesday’s regional semi-final, where they will get a rematch with Drury, who Taconic beat, 58-42, in late January.
“We want to defend our Western Mass title here,” Mickle said. “It’s been a couple of years. It’s what we play for. We had to grind through a regular season and went 9-9 in a good league. We’ve got our eyes on winning Western Mass.”
