WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. -- With the program's leading scorer temporarily felled by an ankle injury, the Mount Greylock girls basketball team has risen to the challenge.
The Mounties stepped up on Friday night and blew past Lenox, 49-16, as they try to win enough games down the stretch to give their co-captain at least one more game in a Mount Greylock uniform.
Arianna Walden scored a game-high 15 points and had four steals and three assists as Mount Greylock won its first game since Barrett was injured in a loss at Drury on Wednesday night.
"It's been hard without Lucy," she said. "But we've just been practicing harder than we usually do and, like, trying to manage.
"After [Wednesday's] game, we were all pretty upset about it. We were down about it. But at practice, we had a pep talk and realized that there's nothing we can do. We've just got to keep pushing and try harder."
The Mounties (7-10) are going to have to need that same kind of effort the rest of the way if they want to qualify for the Western Massachusetts tournament and give Barrett a shot to play again.
Mount Greylock went into Friday's game needing to win four of its last five to get a 10th win and qualify for the tournament.
"We're trying," Walden said. "She said she's probably going to be better. We just want to keep winning so she can eventually have a game."
When she does play, the 10th-leading scorer in Berkshire County girls basketball history has been good for more than 19 points per game this season.
With her in street clothes and sporting crutches on Friday, it was Mount Greylock used defense and a balanced scoring attack.
The score was 28-5 at half-time, and six of the seven Mounties in uniform had at least one steal going into the locker room.
"I was very happy with the defense," Mount Greylock coach -- and Lucy's father -- Paul Barrett said. "We actually had one of our best practices yesterday with six-and-a-half or seven girls."
Sophomore center Jenna Benzinger, who played sparingly in Wednesday's loss at Drury, once again was limited as she recovers from an illness. But she scored eight points to go along with seven rebounds and a blocked shot.
All seven of the Mounties got into the scoring column. Freshman Lauren Howard matched Benzinger with eight, and Haley Reinhard scored seven. Sarah Stripp scored six with nine rebounds, and freshman Caroline Flynn grabbed a game-high 10 boards.
Jackie Hathaway led Lenox (4-13) with six points and nine boards.
For Mount Greylock and the Barrett family, Wednesday's injury echoed the 2011 football season, when Lucy's brother Hank suffered a season-ending injury on the Mounties' road to a third-straight Western Mass Super Bowl title.
"Being on the sideline, we didn't know if it was a broken collarbone and whether he was going to lose the rest of his senior year," said Paul, an assistant football coach. "That wasn't easy.
"This one, when she went down in a pile, I didn't know if it was a knee. And so I was 'relieved' when it was an ankle."
The sprain may keep Lucy out of games for now, but her competitive spirit has transferred to her own spin on the "ice bucket challenge."
"[The doctors say] three weeks," Paul Barrett said. "She's probably going to still be in some pain. I guess after the first week we'll have a much better idea because the swelling is going down. We're doing all the ice bucket stuff."
Besides soaking her ankle in the freezing water, Lucy was out in the sub-zero temperatures early Friday morning for a pre-school physical therapy session.
"From our standpoint, we're being very proactive and thinking: Three weeks if you do the standard recovery, but she's hopefully going to take it to another level as far as doing all the therapy," Paul said. "We're cautiously optimistic she'll be able to tape it up and play in her Senior Night game on the 19th."
Between now and that date against Mount Everett, the Mounties have three other games against Berkshire County South Division foes, starting with Monday's showdown at Lee, a team Mount Greylock beat, 57-44, on Jan. 22 with Barrett scoring 27 points.
