Pittsfield Shuts Down Tantasqua in Tournament Opener
PITTSFIELD, Mass. – Pittsfield girls basketball coach Kristy Conyers lit into her team at the end of the first quarter.
The Generals turned out the lights on Tantasqua in the second quarter.
Second-seeded Pittsfield outscored the 31st-seeded visitors, 28-0, in that quarter to erase a seven-point deficit and went on to a 67-31 win.
Harolyn Castillo scored 25 points, grabbed nine rebounds and accumulated six steals as Pittsfield (17-5) won for the eighth time in nine games and set up a date in the Division 3 State Tournament Sweet 16 with No. 15 Tewksbury, a 56-43 winner over Oakmont on Friday night.
After skunking Tantasqua in the second quarter, Pittsfield opened the second half on a 13-3 run, outscoring the Sturbridge squad by a margin of 41-3 in a span of 12 minutes, 30 seconds and taking a 47-16 lead.
All that after an uncharacteristic opening stanza that saw Pittsfield give up 13 points and force only 10 turnovers.
“We didn’t play a strong first quarter,” Conyers said. “We didn’t come out playing strong. And I told them, ‘You’ve got to have four full quarters of basketball.’ From here on out, every quarter is a game of basketball.
“They responded very well.”
Pittsfield turned up the pressure with its full-court press and forced 18 turnovers in the second quarter. Tantasqua ended up with 53 giveaways in the game.
Early in the second quarter, Asia Smith-Moody got a steal out of the press that led to an and-one in the post for Caprese Conyers (14 points) to make it 13-13.
Tantasqua’s ensuing possession ended with a steal by Madison Stetz in the backcourt. She went coast-to-coast and got to the free throw line, where she converted both shots to give Pittsfield the lead for good just two minutes into the quarter.
A 3-pointer from Kyana Summers (nine points, eight rebounds, six assists) pushed the lead to nine points midway through the quarter. And, after Tantasqua’s second timeout of the period, another turnover out of the press led to a bucket by Castillo to give Pittsfield its first double-digit lead at 24-13.
“She played an all-around good game,” Coach Conyers said of Castillo. “And I think everyone stepped up on defense. Our guards were rebounding. We need everybody. We know we’re not a big team, so the guards know they have to get in there and rebound. It can’t just be Maddie [Stetz] and Harolyn [Castillo].”
Castillo ended up with 10 points in the second quarter, helping Pittsfield take a 34-13 lead into the locker room.
The 13-3 burst to start the second half put the game out of reach when Castillo scored in transition to make it 47-16.
It was a 25-point margin, 51-26, going to the fourth, and Pittsfield pulled further ahead, getting the score to 67-26 on a pair of Smith-Moody free throws with 2:20 left before Tantasqua scored the final five points with all the Pittsfield starters watching from the bench.
Part of Pittsfield’s slow start on Friday may have been due to the layoff between the Western Massachusetts Class B final – nine days earlier – and the state tournament opener against a Tantasqua team that won a preliminary round game on Wednesday.
“It was a long layoff, but my thing is, ‘You’re playing basketball, so you’ve got to come out ready to play,’ “ Coach Conyers said. “No matter who’s on the court, you’ve got to get ready to play. And I told them, the rankings are out the window.
“It’s great we got to have a home game, but everybody’s here to win.”