Pittsfield Withstands Late Foul Trouble, Beat Monument
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — With just over two minutes to play in the game, Pittsfield’s Sydney Deluce stole the ball at midcourt, leading to a Jill Ritrosky layup.It was fitting that this play sealed the Generals’ win.
After starting slow, Pittsfield’s defense sparked a third-quarter run to pull away from Monument Mountain in a 52-38 at home. Not until General foul trouble breathed life into the Spartan attack late in the game.
Pittsfield (2-2, 1-0 North) led 40-26 with five minutes, 35 seconds left in the game when a foul put Monument Mountain (0-4, 0-1) in the bonus and began a trend of free throws throughout the closing minutes. The General’s 14-point lead was cut to single digits when two Monument Mountain free throws with 3:15 remaining to cut the deficit to 45-36.
The Spartans shot 12-of-15 from the foul line in the fourth quarter alone.
“Fouls killed us and helped them,” Generals head coach Joe Racicot said. “[The Spartans] busted their hump. They were running down the floor and taking it to the hoop to get them.”
Monument Mountain’s rally attempt was short-lived, however, as Pittsfield responded with seven unanswered points in just over a minute to extend its lead to 52-36.
After two free throws by Ritrosky, Deluce hit a three-point shot with 2:19 left to extend Pittsfield‘s lead to 50-36. The following play, Deluce pestered a Spartan ball handler at half court, knocking the ball loose to set up a Ritrosky layup and foul in transition, giving the Generals their largest lead of the game at 52-36.
“[Deluce] is my little scrapper. If we get some offense off of [Deluce], that’s great. That’s extra gravy. But we know that when she goes out there, she’s going to be crawling on the floor, moving between people’s legs and going after the ball and she did that,” Racicot said.
The third quarter proved to be the difference in the game. Down 19-18 in the opening minutes of the second half, the General full-court man-to-man press forced five steals and a 17-2 run to end the third quarter and take a 35-21 lead. Saige Conyers helped to spark the run with her fiesty defense. Dominique Satrape led the way offensively with seven points, helping Pittsfield score 15 unanswered and attain the lead for good.
Satrape and Ritrosky each finished with a game-high 15 points. Ritrosky, who also had 15 rebounds to lead Pittsfield, acknowledged that her team started off slowly, but had a renewed intensity in the second half.
“We had a lot of turnovers and we just weren’t really aggressive in the first half. Then, we came out way more aggressive in the second [half]. For me, I know we had to come out and hit them hard on defense. That’s how we were going to come back and get steals and layups,” Ritrosky said.
Pittsfield began the game by scoring seven straight points, before finding itself down 11-10 after the first quarter. Racicot believed his team should have played more consistently throughout the game.
“When teams start shooting two-shot fouls early in each half, it comes back to haunt you. We won the game. We can celebrate that. But we only played one good quarter and that was the third quarter,” Racicot said.