NORTH ADAMS – Drury girls’ head coach John Franzoni has one clear and distinct message for his basketball team following the Blue Devils 44-39 loss to Lenox at home on Tuesday night. 

 

“You can’t protect home court if you can’t protect the basketball.” 

 

That was a hard-lesson learned for Drury (1-1), who followed up Friday’s blowout win over New Leadership with a clunker against a determined Millionaires squad at Bucky Bullett Gymnasium. The Blue Devils committed nearly 30 turnovers and gave up six offensive rebounds in the second half alone to allow Lenox the second chances it would need to pull out a win in its first game of the season. 

 

“I think we turned the ball over close to 30 times tonight, and that’s ridiculous,” Franzoni said after the game. “The first thing we wrote on the chalkboard tonight was ball toughness and to make good decisions, and we did not do that. You can’t play against a Berkshire County team and turn the basketball over as many times as we did and you can’t give up offensive rebound after offensive rebound because we didn’t want to work inside.” 

 

Playing without starting guard Danielle Racette, who was sideline due to illness, the hosts got off to a rough start, turning the ball over three times on their first three trips down the court. The Millionaires took quick advantage, jumping out to a 10-2 lead keyed by three straight baskets by forward Jaclyn Gigliotti. Her ability to attack the basket seemed to bother Drury all night as Gigliotti netted a game-high 14 points to go along with four rebounds. 

 

“We’ve got a lot of young legs, and it was our plan to pressure them, trap them and get into passing lanes,” Lenox head coach Nicole Patella said. “Jaclyn is one of the best finishers I have this year, so we’d really like her to attack the basket whenever she can.” 

 

After struggling to hold onto the ball in the first quarter, Blue Devils’ point guard Cassie Lincoln (5 points, 3 assists, 5 steals) got the offense under control in the next frame, turning a 12-4 deficit into a 20-16 lead at the half. She got a big push from freshman forward Morgan Lamarre, who scored seven of team-high 11 points in the first half. Another big reason for the turnaround was Drury’s defensive pressure at the half-court line, which held Lenox to just two baskets in all of the second quarter. 

 

“We did a little bit of a half-court trap and tried to change it up a little bit,” Franzoni said. “We were not pressuring the ball good enough in the full court, and I thought we did a good job of changing things there.”

 

With the game tied at 16 apiece, Lamarre caught the ball on the right wing and buried a long ball for the only three of the game, giving the Blue Devils their first lead of the game. On a night where she was the top option on offense, it was unfortunate for Franzoni that she missed most of the second half with foul trouble. 

 

“It was a big loss to lose Morgan in the fourth quarter, but she just seemed to find herself getting a couple of fouls where she got caught being aggressive,” Franzoni said. “It’s interesting, but we really need her on the court. She’s one of our best players right now. She does the little things in practice every day. She’s working hard and it’s paying off for her. I think she only played like 30 seconds in the fourth quarter, and that really hurt us tonight.” 

 

The two teams remained fairly even throughout the third quarter, with the Millionaires taking a 31-28 lead into the fourth on a turnaround shot by Gigliotti just before the buzzer. Lenox began enforcing its will on the glass, however, earning a decisive 13-7 advantage in rebounding in the second half. The game went back and forth until the final minutes of the game when Drury sophomore Ali Tatro (7 points, 4 rebounds, 4 steals) made a pair of free throws to put her team up by two with 2:12 left on the clock. 

 

That would be the Blue Devils’ last lead, however, as the Millionaires’ Kathy Prescott scored on a weakside layup after two consecutive offensive rebounds by Lenox. Drury turned the ball over on its next trip down the court, allowing Gigliotti to hit the game winner, which was another lay in kept alive by another offensive rebound by Prescott. 

 

“We hit the boards pretty hard, and we did well on the defensive end,” Patella said. “We were trying to stop their guards from getting any open looks and the game plan worked.” 

 

Franzoni seemed to second that emotion. 

 

“To their credit, they moved the basketball well and they didn’t turn it over as much as we did,” he said. “When they got opportunities inside, they took advantage of them. We missed too many inside shots, we turned the ball over too much and we have to move the basketball better. 

 

“It’s no mystery. We didn’t do the little things tonight, and Lenox did.”