GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. – When it took a little while for the Lenox girls basketball team’s offense to heat up on Tuesday night, the Millionaires defense kept the heat squarely on Monument Mountain.
And Chloe Parsenios was the key, getting eight of her 10 steals in the first half of a 50-26 win that sent Lenox to 14-1 on the season.
“She really set the tone defensively,” said Bailey Patella, filling in on the bench for the second straight night for his mother and Lenox head coach Nicole Patella. “When she’s playing hard, going for the ball and is engaged in our defense, we’re a really hard team to beat.
“And everyone kind of feeds off that energy. She does a great job. We have our leaders, Jocelyn [Fairfield] and Kelsey [Kirchner] and Charlie [Keator] talking behind her, which helps as well.
“As long as those girls are talking and Chloe has got it going, we’re a really good team defensively.”
Good enough to hold the Spartans to just 11 points at half-time and keep Monument Mountain in single digits in each quarter.
At the other end of the floor, Grace Julieano led Lenox’s offense with a game-high 17 points. Kirchner added 12 to go with seven rebounds and a block.
Monument Mountain got eight points from Remi Perreault and 12 rebounds, four points and a couple of assists from Polly Geddes.
Geddes set up Jaziyah Forte for a bucket at the end of the first quarter to trim Lenox’s lead to 10-5.
And the Spartans hung tough through the second quarter, going to the locker room down just 10 points despite six from Julieano in that quarter.
But even after watching his Spartans stay in striking distance of the second-ranked Division 5 team in the state, Monument Mountain coach John Perreault had concerns.
“Even in the second quarter, we didn’t play good defense,” he said. “We still fight, but disappointed tonight our defensive effort wasn’t there. We gave up way too many easy baskets.”
Once again, the Spartans were forced to play short-handed. In a season that has been marked by injuries and illness, Monument Mountain took the floor Tuesday without point guard Alex Tenney, who was injured the last time out in the Spartans’ win over Taconic.
While Perreault was concerned about his team’s defense, Patella was worried that Lenox’s offense was not doing a better job taking advantage of the 21 turnovers the Millionaires forced in the first half.
“We held them to 11, but our offense couldn’t get going,” he said. “At half, I said, ‘We’re not doing a terrible job rebounding. We’re just slowing the pace. We’ve got to get out and run – and run and run and run.’
“We didn’t make our layups in the first half. We made some in the second half, which was good, which helped us build that lead. And once we had that lead, we played with it.”
Lenox opened the second half on a 16-5 run to open up a 21-point lead.
Kirchner scored four points during that stretch. Claire O’Brien hit a 3-pointer, and Julieano scored five points, including a conventional three-point play with just more than a minute left in the quarter to make it 36-16. Fairfield (seven points) followed with a free throw to push the margin to 21.
After Monument Mountain’s Brooke Decker scored to snap Lenox’s run, Kirchner capped the quarter with a bucket to send the Millionaires into the fourth ahead, 39-18.
Lenox (14-1) takes an eight-game winning streak into Thursday’s home game against Easthampton. The Millionaires beat the Eagles, 41-33, on Jan. 15.
Monument Mountain (1-15) is back at it at home on Wednesday against Greenfield for the Spartans’ Senior Night.
“My kids work really hard,” Perreault said. “The last couple of practices, the defense wasn’t great. That really hurt us tonight.
“We played, actually, a good first quarter. A lot of times, by half-time, we’re down by 30. At half-time, we said, ‘We didn’t play well, and we’re in this game.’ But then we came out and continued not to play well. Lenox picked it up, and the next thing I know, we were down by 30.”
