NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Neither the Blue Devils nor Spartans were at full strength for Friday’s Central Division girls basketball game in Bucky Bullett Gymnasium.
But Drury was strong enough to snap a three-game skid with a 59-18 win over Monument Mountain.
Jacinta Felix scored 14 points, and 10 different Drury players put a mark in the scorebook as the Devils overcame the absence of four would-be regulars in the varsity lineup.
“We needed a ‘get right’ game or whatever you want to call it, and we were really undermanned tonight,” Drury coach Ian Downey said. “Meghan [McGrath] has been unavailable all year. Marley [Brothers] had a concussion in the last game; she wasn’t here. You have Delaney [Hayden] who, last game, had a fracture of her sternum, so she was unavailable tonight. And then Izzy Moore had some medical stuff going on, so she wasn’t here.
“I had at least two starters not here tonight. The two players who would probably play in their places were not here tonight. So I was, really, going into the game … if I’m being honest, I didn’t know what to expect.”
On the other bench, Monument Mountain coach John Perrault has come to expect that his squad would have to deal with being short-handed, as it has most of the season.
“We were down two key players,” Perreault said, referring to Jaziyah Forte and Alex Tenney. “I was down two key players the week before that. We haven’t had a lot of luck in regards to [injuries] this year, but the girls go out, and they play hard.
“We’re struggling on offense right now, which is a huge thing, and when you get to 0-8, 0-9, it’s sometimes hard to get up for every game. But we’re trying. And, hopefully, I have one more week without Alex, and I think Jaziyah should be back on Sunday from her illness.”
When the Spartans hosted the Blue Devils in mid December, Drury came away with a 44-34 win. Forte scored 11 points, and Tenney scored nine for Monument Mountain that night, accounting for more than half the team’s offense.
Without those two in the lineup and facing a withering pressure defense from Drury, Monument Mountain was held scoreless in the first quarter.
At the other end, Felix scored five points, and Brooke Bishop knocked down a 3-pointer to help Drury open a 15-0 lead after eight minutes.
The Spartans started strong in the second with Remi Perreault driving to the basket and drawing a foul in the opening moments. She sank both her free throws to give Monument Mountain its first points of the night.
After a bucket from Bishop at the other end, Caroline Becker knocked down a 3-pointer to trim the deficit to 12 points at 17-5.
But Drury scored the next nine, including another triple from Bishop (10 points) to make it a 21-point margin.
It was a 26-7 Drury lead at half-time, and the Blue Devils opened the third quarter on a 16-0 run before Downey got his starters out of the game.
Polly Geddes scored eight of her team-high 10 points and grabbed eight of her 12 rebounds in the second half for Monument Mountain.
For the Blue Devils, eighth-graders Keira Vidal and Lily Mirante scored five and seven points, respectively, in the second half. Drury needed to keep his junior varsity players on the bench after the quarters they played in Friday’s opener.
“There’s been years when you put your bench in, and they haven’t had many minutes, and you’re like, ‘How are they going to respond to this?’ “ Downey said. “And they scored. They came out, and they were aggressive. That’s what we like to see.
“There are times when girls who don’t typically get to play are timid, because they don’t want to make a mistake. And my message has always been to every player: Everyone makes mistakes. As long as you learn from it, it’s good to go.”
The season also has been a learning experience for Perreault’s Spartans.
“When you get to 0-8, 0-9, and you’ve got Wahconah on Monday and Pope Francis on Thursday, Drury tonight … it’s just a tough stretch right now, especially without key people,” Perreault said. “But that’s basketball. You’ve got to take what comes at you.
“We learn from it, and, at the end of the day, there’s some good life lessons to be learned here. And hopefully the girls walk away with some of those lessons.”
The Spartans (0-9) travel to Wahconah on Monday evening.
Drury (3-4), which started Friday as the 19th-ranked team in Division 5 in the first MIAA statewide power rankings of the season, hosts Taconic on Monday before going to No. 16 Pioneer Valley on Tuesday.
