WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Jacinta Felix scored 15 points, and the Drury girls basketball team took control of a back-and-forth game with a 15-4 second half run to earn a 51-40 win over Mount Greylock on Friday.
Ninth-grader Eva Moser scored six points in that decisive run, which also saw Felix score three points and pass out two assists.
Moser finished with nine points on a night when Drury’s bench accounted for 24 of its points.
“The bench is going to be huge for us,” Drury coach Ian Downey said. “As a coach, you have your girls who come back, you have your rotational players, and then, as the year goes on, you need girls to step up because you’re going to have girls that aren’t playing well, you’re gonna have girls who are sick, you’re gonna have girls who get injured.
“So, as the year goes on, you’re always looking for girls to step up to lengthen your bench. And at the beginning of the year, I had a short bench. … And I finally feel like right now, the trust process is starting with girls. The girls are playing better in practice. It’s translating to the games.
“And, obviously, Eva is one of those girls where, she’s big down there. She can put the ball in the hoop. And
she’s built that trust to the point where I can have her in at the end of the game.”
The Blue Devils (3-3) jumped out to an early lead with a 10-2 run to start the game.
Although Mount Greylock (2-4) struggled with ball security in the early going, it was able to turn things around starting with an Emma Newberry 3-pointer that got the deficit down to four at 10-6.
It was a five-point margin going to the second quarter, and the Mounties got within one midway through the period when Mia Filiault (six points) hit a 3-pointer with an assist from Molly Sullivan.
That started a 9-0 run that included another Filiault triple and three free throws from Charlotte Coody (team-high 11 points).
Her third free throw gave the Mounties a 24-19 lead, but the Blue Devils answered with back-to-back 3-pointers from Hannah LaCasse (11 points) in an 8-0 spurt to go ahead by three with just less than a minute left in the half.
Drury led, 27-26, at half-time, and it was still a one-point game with 2:17 left in the third when Newberry hit a free throw to give the Mounties their last lead at 33-32.
Drury finished the third by scoring six straight: two buckets by Moser in the post and a Felix basket in transition.
“I thought it would, hopefully, come down to the wire the way the game was going, but in the early fourth quarter, Charlotte [Coody] picked up her fourth, and I tried to sit her for a minute,” Mount Greylock coach John Jacobbe said. “And they scored four or five in that stretch. … She didn’t get her fifth, but they attacked her a little bit.
“In the fourth quarter, Drury made more plays than we did.”
Felix was key on three big plays to start the fourth.
She set up Moser for a basket that turned into a conventional three-point play, fed LaCasse for a 3-pointer and got fouled on an offensive rebound that also drew Coody’s fourth personal. Felix hit the second of her free throws to give Drury a 45-36 lead with 4:37 left to play.
The last four minutes of the half featured eight turnovers between the two teams. Mount Greylock got within seven with just more than a minute left, but Lauren Davis (10 points) converted both ends of a one-and-one, and Moser scored with an assist from Davis to provide the final margin.
Drury, which finished 2022 with a disappointing showing at Hoosac Valley, earned its second road win of 2023 to even its record.
“What we talked about [at Ludlow] was stopping the losing streak, and we did that,” Downey said of Tuesday’s win. “This was about starting to build a winning streak. I told them, looking at our schedule for the month of January, when we were sitting at 1-3, there’s no reason we can’t go on an 11-game winning streak. But it starts with one and then two and then three.
“I thought tonight, our energy was great. I thought our effort was great. And my favorite part is I thought at the end of the game, we remained composed. We didn’t turn it over. We hit our free throws, and that’s going to win you ballgames in tough environments. It’s not easy to come into Greylock and win games. We don’t normally play well here, so it was a nice win for them.”
Drury will look for its third win in a row on Tuesday when it goes to Agawam.
Mount Greylock is at Springfield International Charter School on Tuesday.
