Drury 'D' Dominant in Senior Night Win
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – The Drury girls basketball team Thursday got a statement win on Senior Night.
Megan McGrath scored 10 points to lead the Blue Devils on offense, but it was Drury’s defense that was center stage in a 42-28 win over Pope Francis.
The Blue Devils held the Division 3 Cardinals in the 20s for only the second time this season. The first time was Pope Francis’ 53-21 loss back on Dec. 21 against St. Mary’s of Lynn, the seventh-ranked team in Division 2.
The Cards’ Maeve Turmel, who scored 14 points, including the 1,000th of her career in a win over Drury back on Jan. 6, was held to just two points.
Drury junior Ashlyn Hayden drew the defensive assignment on Turmel.
“That’s a 1,000-point scorer that she held to two points, and that’s probably the difference in the game,” Drury coach Ian Downey said. “That’s why they only had 28 points.
“We pride ourselves in trying to shut down the other team’s best player. Ash has that responsibility, but that also puts a lot of pressure on the other four players to do something. And to only give up 28 points against that team. … To do that is a total team effort.”
Pope Francis (9-5) came into the game as the No. 15 team in Division 3.
Drury (11-3) is currently No. 2 in Division 5 in the latest MIAA in-season power rankings.
Pope Francis had its best offensive quarter in the first, which ended in an 11-11 tie after Drury’s Ella Bond (nine points) hit a 3-pointer in the final minute.
The Blue Devils then built a five-point lead going into half-time after Kiera Vidal set up Norah Wood for a triple with 1 second left in the second quarter to make it 20-15.
After giving up just 15 points in the first half, the Drury defense dug in a little harder and held the Cards to just 13 points in the second half, when Pope Francis committed 14 turnovers, two apiece forced by Megan McGrath and Lily Mirante.
Meanwhile, Hayden kept Turmel from finding any success on the offensive end.
It was a six-point lead going to the fourth, which started with a conventional three-point play by McGrath, a Vidal 3-pointer and a basket by McGrath in transition to open a 36-23 lead three minutes in.
Everything was going Drury’s way until the 3 minute, 53 second mark, when McGrath hit the deck and was helped off the court after battling for an offensive rebound.
Fortunately for the Blue Devils, she eventually got back into the game in the closing moments. But even in her absence, Drury had a chance to show its depth.
“I thought Keira [Vidal] did an incredible job coming in,” Downey said. “She is someone who can control games. She’s a true point guard. I was a point guard in high school, so I probably have a soft spot for her. So for her to come in this game with Megan getting hurt there a little bit – which I think was just a cramp – and other girls not quite being themselves tonight. For her to come in in a big game like that and control the game and finish the game, I thought was huge for her and us.”
Vidal was 3-for-4 at the free throw line in the final two minutes, and the Blue Devils as a team were 6-for-8 at the line down the stretch to put the game away.
Drury takes a seven-game winning streak into Monday’s game at Lenox before closing with a stretch that includes Frontier and South Hadley – both ranked in the top four in Division 4 statewide.
“I think that’s an important way to finish the season,” Downey said. “We started the season with a pretty hard schedule. It got soft in the middle. And now we have Pope Francis, Frontier and South Hadley in three of our last five games. I think it’s a good way to see where we are as a program.
“We’ve done a good job of doing what we need to do against teams that aren’t as good as us. But can we get statement wins like this? We’ve proven at times that we can. We’ve beaten Wahconah when we needed to beat Wahconah. We finally got over the hump against Hoosac [Valley]. This is another of those games where it makes me believe that these girls can do something good this year.”