Drury Secures State Title Berth
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Lily Mirante scored 11 points Friday to lead the Drury girls basketball team to a 51-21 win over Agawam.
Mirtante accounted for three of the Blue Devils’ eight 3-pointers as they picked up their 10th win of the season and punched their ticket for the Division 5 State Tournament.
Ashlyn Hayden scored nine, and Keira Vidal added eight as Drury got offense from nine different players in earning their sixth straight win.
Blue Devils coach Ian Downey said he has been emphasizing getting off to a good start, and his team responded, building a 27-3 lead early in the second quarter.
Agawam did not get a field goal until the 2 minute, 20 second mark of the first quarter, when it already was in a 17-0 hole.
“My biggest thing toward the second half of the season is we’ve gotten off to some slow starts,” Downey said. “So, in order to fix that, we have to start at home, getting off to faster starts, which we’ve seen the last two games … and then start translating that to on the road.
“Becuase if we want to win something this year, whether it’s Western Mass or states or advancing in either tournament, we are going to have to get on a bus. That’s just the reality of it.”
On Thursday, Drury outscored Mount Greylock, 17-2, in the first quarter en route to a 54-19 win.
Twenty-four hours later, Mirante dropped in a 3-pointer with an assist from Megan McGrath to get the team off to a fast start. Delaney Hayden’s triple capped a 9-0 run. And after the visitors got a free throw, Drury scored eight more – including two more Mirante 3s.
It was 22-3 after the first quarter, and Vidal and Eva Moser (six points, six rebounds) scored to start the second, giving their team a 24-point edge.
Later, Moser scored Drury’s only points of the fourth quarter to give the Blue Devils a 51-17 lead, their biggest of the night, before Downey cleared his bench for the final four minutes.
Earlier in the day, Drury learned it is currently the No. 2-ranked team in Division 5 in the MIAA’s latest statewide, in-season power rankings.
Friday night’s win makes the Blue Devils 10-3 and officially qualifies them for next month’s state tournament.
“Obviously, that’s a magic number for a lot of teams,” Downey said of the 10-win mark. “We typically play a really hard schedule, so it’s a number that we tend to get later in the season. The girls this year have done really well against some of the better teams, and it’s put us in a better position this year than most seasons.”
Drury, which already has rescheduled its game previously scheduled for Monday, is off until Thursday when it hosts Pope Francis, a 44-39 winner when the teams met in Springfield earlier this month.