CHESHIRE, Mass. – The first half of Friday’s Drury-Hoosac Valley girls basketball game had six lead changes.
The second half had just one.
The Hurricanes used a 15-0 run to erase an early six-point deficit in the second half en route to a 54-42 win in the season’s only meeting between the North County rivals.
Ashlyn Lesure scored 15 points, and Taylor Garabedian had 13 in a balanced Hoosac Valley attack that saw seven players score at least four points.
A back-and-forth first half ended on a high note for the Blue Devils when Brooke Bishop (nine points, 11 rebounds) put back an offensive rebound at the buzzer to send the teams to their locker rooms tied, 27-27.
Drury then carried that momentum into the second half with a 6-0 spurt on buckets from Lauren Davis (11 points), Bishop and Hannah LaCasse to grab the largest lead of the game for either team at 33-27.
At the other end, Abby Sicalabba put back a rebound for the Hurricanes to spark the decisive run.
Moments later, Garabedian got an and-one in the post to erase a two-point deficit and put Hoosac Valley ahead, 34-33.
Another and-one moments later from Gabby Billetz made it a four-point cushion. And Billetz scored again in the post to end the quarter with a 39-33 Hurricane lead.
“We wanted to feed those girls as much as we can,” Hoosac Valley coach Jon Frederick said. “They’re big for us. They can play. And we didn’t really think they could stop our post play.
“At the same time, we struggled getting it in to them. So [Drury] did a good job denying. They ran a great motion offense, cut in to the hoop. We were struggling with the screens on that. But the second half, we cut it down, we knew what was going on. The girls have seen it the last three days between Pittsfield and South Hadley.”
The Hurricanes, who came within seven points of unbeaten Pittsfield, beat South Hadley and Drury to finish vacation week 2-1 and even their season’s record to 3-3 going into a road game at Granby on Tuesday to start 2023.
A big reason why was a defense that gave Drury fits for most of the third quarter and into the fourth, forcing 12 second-half turnovers.
“Actually, our press really isn’t that effective,” Frederick said. “We went into a man press. We felt comfortable with matching up with their girls. We’re not a press team. We really aren’t. We can be physical. Sometimes we get a little too physical, as you can see with the hand-checking and stuff. Once we clean that up and move our feet, we’re OK. But we’re not a barn-burner.
“We can press if we need to. Sometimes it works and other times we get burnt by it. We’ll try to mix it in when we can.”
After Davis hit a foul shot for Drury with 5:59 left in the fourth to end Hoosac Valley’s 15-0 run, the Hurricanes scored the next five – including a triple by Lesure to make it a 15-point lead midway through the fourth quarter.
Alyssa Russell (15 points) hit a couple of shots, including one of her three 3-pointers, down the stretch for Drury. But the Blue Devils never got closer than nine points when Davis converted both ends of a one-and-one with 51 seconds left to make it 51-42.
The Blue Devils slipped to 1-3 going into Tuesday’s road game at Ludlow.
Drury coach Ian Downey said he takes solace from the fact that Drury went into Springfield International Charter and Hoosac Valley in its last two games and was essentially even at half-time against two teams that went to the Division 5 State Semi-Finals last winter.
“The bottom line is, Hoosac is a good team to play because they’re going play physical, they’re going to be in your face, they’re going to make you feel uncomfortable,” Downey said. “And if you can run your stuff like we did in the first half against them, you can run it against any team in the state. That’s the type of stuff we have to take away.
“I just thought we lost our composure in the second half. That stuff happens. We let it get away, and we could never recover.”
