Blue Devils Smother Ware, Set Up Clash with Hoosac Valley
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – The Drury girls basketball team’s withering defensive pressure did not do any favors for 16th-seeded Ware in Monday’s Division 5 State Tournament Sweet 16 game.
Well, maybe one favor.
The Blue Devils’ full-court press produced at least a half dozen 10-second calls against the visitors, who had trouble getting the ball over half court, much less scoring in a 61-21 loss.
“I joked around with my assistant that it was probably actually helping them,” Drury coach Ian Downey said. “Because those are dead ball turnovers. As a coach, you say, if you’re gonna turn the ball over, you want it to be a dead ball turnover, so at least you get back and set your defense.”
Drury got plenty of live-ball turnovers and easy scores in grabbing a 20-7 lead after one quarter that ballooned to a 40-point bulge by the end of the third.
The dominant win sends Drury to the Round of 8, where they will see a familiar foe, ninth-seeded Hoosac Valley, a road winner on Monday night at Granby.
The Blue Devils (18-5) went over 60 points for just the fifth time this season without having a single player score in double figures.
Ella Bond, Elise Daly, Ashlyn Hayden and Addisyn Shepard each scored eight to lead Drury. Delaney Hayden scored seven points, and Megan McGrath and Lily Mirante each had six in a balanced attack.
It was a five-point game in the closing minutes of the first quarter when Drury went on a 10-0 run that went into the second quarter.
Shepard got things started with a basket in the post and closed the rally with a second-chance bucket assisted by Delaney Hayden to make it 22-7. In between, Ashlyn Hayden put a charge into the crowd with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer following a Drury inbound with fewer than 2 seconds on the clock.
Another Ashlyn Hayden triple and an Ella Bond basket in transition closed out the second quarter to give Drury a 33-12 lead.
But the knockout blow came after half-time, when Drury held Ware to just a free throw in the third quarter, pushing the lead to 53-13.
The Blue Devils’ defense did not allow Ware a field goal for about a 16-minute stretch that started midway through the second quarter and ended with a putback from the visitors’ Emily Jones with 3 minutes, 50 seconds on the clock in the fourth.
“I actually thought of all the games we played this year, tonight was the most active that we were – defensively in our press, moving offensively, which is just the confidence that’s growing in them as a team,” Downey said. “Obviously, individually, certain players are playing well. But I think the way they’re moving around as a unit, defensively – whether it’s half court, in our man, or in the full-court press – or running our offense, I think, as a group, they’re confident.”
Now, Drury will look to ride that confidence where the program has not gone since the advent of the statewide tournament in 2021-22, the Final Four.
Standing in the way is reigning D5 Champion, four-time state champ and nine-time state finalist Hoosac Valley.
“You don’t want to play a team three times,” Downey said. “Are we playing well? Yes. But now we’re going to play a team that knows us. I’ll give the girls a day off [Tuesday], but we’ll have to have the two best practices that we’ve had all year.”
Playing its rival in Bucky Bullett Gymnasium for a berth in the state semi-finals will be special. But Downey, for one, wishes a potential matchup with the Hurricanes might come a little later in the tournament.
“I don’t know why the state tournament does this to Berkshire County teams, because it’s a shame that, again, you’ve got Lee and Lenox knocking each other out [in Tuesday’s Sweet 16 game] and us and Hoosac knocking each other out [on Friday],” he said. “That’s my only real complaint: I think Berkshire County teams can make good runs, and it stinks that we’re going to knock each other out.”