by E. Jay Zarett
Bishop Grimes’ Abby Wilkinson stepped to the free throw line with just over a minute remaining and her team trailing Westhill by two in Sunday’s girls basketball Section III Class B semifinal at Onondaga Community College’s Allyn Hall.
Wilkinson sunk both those free throws, then added three more to lead the no. 2 seed Cobras past the no. 6 seed Warriors, 47-44, and earning a shot at the title against top seed Bishop Ludden next weekend.
“I was so nervous,” Wilkinson said about her game-clinching free throws. “But, I was just like ‘I’ve got to go back to my routine.’ I just blocked out the [crowd] and I made them.”
Westhill had eliminated Grimes from the sectional playoffs in each of the last three seasons and had beaten the Cobras in January, too, so it figured that head coach John Cifonelli would call topping the Warriors on this stage was a landmark for his program.
“This is as big a game as any of these kids have ever played in,” Cifonelli said. “I think maybe it got the best of us early. But, once we got our feet on the ground, we played a really good second half.”
Grimes scored just nine points in the opening quarter and struggled to create offense throughout the half. Then Westhill extended to a 19-11 lead with 5:49 left in the half.
Over the next two minutes, Grimes’ Azariah Wade answered with four straight points, cutting her team’s deficit to just three. However, with under a minute to go before halftime, Westhill’s Mackenzie Martin converted back-to- back lay-ups, giving her 15 points in the half and extending her team’s lead to 23-16 at the break.
Even with all that, the Cobras were on the verge of taking control of the game following halftime.
Wade scored seven points in the first three minutes and one possession later, Molly McInerney released a 3-pointer from straight awa that appeared to be short. But the ball hit the front of the rim, bounced straight in the air and fell through, giving Grimes a 29-28 lead.
Westhill now made its own move. When Erica Gangemi finished a lay-up with 2:45 left in the third quarter, the Warriors went back in front, and the Cobras would not lead again until the game’s final moments.
Yet the margin never got more than four points the rest of the way. That was the margin after Martin’s final field goal with two minutes left, but Wade answered with a lay-up and McInerney converted a free throw to set-up Wilkinson’s five makes.
Wade totaled 15 second-half points to finish with 22 points overall. “I knew that I needed to do more and that I needed to take over,” Wade said.
“Westhill is so well coached and they’re so tough,” Cifonelli said. “For our kids to have the wherewithal to fight in the second half and make big plays down the stretch, I thought that was huge.”
And now Grimes faces Ludden, whom it lost to, 51-45, on Feb. 9. The Gaelic Knights needed Danielle Rauch’s free throw to squeak out a 51-50 victory over South Jefferson in the other sectional semifinal.
Grimes earned this latest attempt to upend Westhill by playing quite well in last Tuesday’s sectional Class B quarterfinal against no. 10 seed Phoenix, taking over in the game’s middle stages and defeating the Firebirds 61-41.
This mirrored what had taken place on Dec. 8 on this same court. Grimes had handled Phoenix 57-35 that night, little imagining that the Firebirds would turn things around in mid-season and pick up several big wins, including one over Bishop Ludden on Jan. 19.
Regardless of what had taken place in those two months, the Cobras’ strategy was the same – contain Phoenix’s 1,000-point scorer, Samantha Doupe, which it did, to a reasonable degree, holding her to 10 points and a pair of 3-pointers.
Trailing 14-13 after one period, the Cobras moved ahead for good by outscoring the Firebirds 17-8 the rest of the half. And it didn’t let up as a high-scoring third quarter saw Grimes extend its lead to 52-35, out of Phoenix’s reach.
Phoenix never had an adequate answer for Wade, who poured in 27 points from nine field goals and nine successful free throws. Wilkinson hit on four 3-pointers and finished with 15 points overall as McInerney got eight points and Sarah Snavlin got six points.
