On the brink of its most impressive win of the season, the Skaneateles girls basketball team went quiet at just the wrong moment.
Thus, a potential victory at Chittenango last Thursday night turned, instead, into a 44-37 defeat where the Lakers did not manage a single point in the entire fourth quarter.
Only 2-6 going into the game, the Lakers were coming off a solid showing in the Hoops for the Hospital Tournament Dec. 28-29 that included a 70-66 win over archrival Marcellus and a 63-42 defeat to state Class C no. 2-ranked Watkins Glen.
Against Watkins Glen, Skaneateles was in close range throughout the first half, but saw things get away during a 20-4 third-quarter Watkins Glen run. Still, Chloe Metz finished the night with 13 points, while Olivia Dobrovosky earned 12 points. Hannah Atkinson and Olivia Navaroli had six points apiece.
Chittenango was not state-ranked, but did carry an 8-1 record and had just won its own ‘More Than a Game’ Tournament at the end of 2015. None of this seemed to impress the Lakers too much, though.
They played on even terms until late in the second quarter, when Skaneateles did enough to secure a 23-19 halftime lead. Then that margin stretched out a bit in the third period and the Lakers were up 37-31 with one quarter to go.
By then, Dobrovosky had accumulated 12 points, heading a well-balanced attack where Metz and Ryley Pas’cal got eight points apiece and Atkinson earned seven points. And the defense was containing Chittenango’s top player, Ally Shoemaker, who would only manage 12 points.
Yet Shoemaker was a defensive standout, and in the fourth quarter, she ran her total to seven steals and led a complete Bears shutdown of the Skaneateles attack.
Blanked in those last eight minutes, the Lakers could only watch as Shoemaker and Trisha Whaley (seven points, six steals) led the uprising and all nine Chittenango players that saw action earned at least two points.