Drury Girls Earn Berth in State Final
WORCESTER, Mass. -- The first-seeded Drury girls basketball team used a third quarter to remember to blow through the Final Four and into this weekend's Division 5 State Championship Game.
Megan McGrath scored 15 points, and Ashlyn Hayden scored 13 and grabbed nine rebounds to lead the Blue Devils to a 45-27 win over St. John Paul II at North High School on Wednesday night.
The key was the third quarter, when Drury shook off first-half offensive doldrums to outscore the Lions, 21-14, and build an 18-point margin going to the fourth.
"If you look at our games, we've been a third-quarter team all year," Drury coach Ian Downey said. "And the reason I point that out so much is because, at half-time, you ask your players to to do stuff, right? And some players respond. Some players don't.
"And this team, every game this year, coming out of half-time has come and done what we needed them to do in the third quarter. And it's obviously put us in a great position to play for a state championship."
Drury (20-5) will meet second-seeded Hopedale, a 44-41 winner over Douglas, in the state final at UMass-Lowell's Tsongas Center, this weekend on a day and at a time to be announced.
In Wednesday's state semi-final, Drury came out with its usual stifling defense in the first half, forcing 20 JPII turnovers in the first 16 minutes. But the Blue Devils did not get their offense in gear until after half-time.
Hayden scored with an assist from Ella Bond and put back an offensive rebound in an 8-2 spurt to take a 21-6 lead two minutes into the third quarter.
Hayden ended up with 10 points in the quarter.
"We've been a team all year, whether it's Ash and Megan playing defense, Delaney [Hayden] and Ella [Bond] hitting from the outside, our bigs dominating down low -- yeah, Ash had a monster game, obviously, in the third quarter," Downey said. "But it's a snowball effect with our team. If we score, we can press you. If we press you, we can turn you over. If we turn you over, we can score.
"And then it keeps going."
Drury took its biggest lead of the night late in the third when Ashlyn Hayden got a block and defensive rebound at one end and a transition layup at the other to make it 36-15.
After JPII made a 7-0 run early in the third to get within 12 at 37-25, McGrath drove the right wing for a bucket with 3:20 left to start an 8-0 Drury run to put the game away.
Offensive frustration was the name of the game for both teams in the first half.
It took 3 minutes, 25 seconds for either team to make a mark on the scoreboard.
And, fittingly, it was Drury's defense that was key to the game's first points, producing a turnover that led to McGrath's layup in transition to give her team a 2-0 lead.
A minute later, Lily Mirante sank a 3-pointer to put the Blue Devils up by five, and the first quarter ended with Ashlyn Hayden's triple from the right wing at the buzzer to give Drury an 8-0 lead.
John Paul II finally got on the board three minutes into the second quarter with a pair of free throws from Marlo Jumper.
The Lions got within seven late in the half before Keira Vidal set up Ella Bond for a bucket in the closing seconds to give Drury a 13-4 lead in the locker room.
Contributing to their offensive woes in the first 16 minutes was the teams' performance from the free throw line. Drury was 1-for-11 at the stripe in the first half; SJPII, despite Jumper's hits, was 2-for-8.
The Blue Devils this weekend will be playing their first state final since 1981 and will be going for their first state championship since 1978.
"Every coach wants to [get to a state final], and now that I'm experiencing it, it's a hard thing to do," Downey said. "It is so hard to, every game, be locked in, because, as the [Drury] boys found out against Hoosac, one bad game and you're done.
"And this team, I'd have to look, but I don't know how many quarters we've been outscored in the tournament. Maybe one the whole tournament. And that's a testament that we are locking in every possession of every quarter."
Photos from this game to come.