Twelve consecutive wins and a no. 14 state Class AA ranking led the Baldwinsville girls basketball team to its most important regular-season test yet.
In front of the Bees last Friday night was Cicero-North Syracuse, who also had not lost to a Salt City Athletic Conference Metro division foe, so first place in the league was at stake.
It turned into a tense, close affair, decided as much by who wasn’t on the court at the end as who was, with B’ville dealt its first defeat of the season by the Northstars by a score of 50-45.
While it was true that C-NS had started the season 3-5, the losses had all come against elite competition, three of them in a December national tournament in Arizona.
B’ville was effective for most of the game in limiting the Northstars’ production outside its 1,000-point scoring junior forward, Jessica Cook.
Even though Cook would finish with 20 points, many of them in the third quarter to help C-NS erase the 24-19 halftime advantage the Bees had built.
Early in the fourth quarter, the Bees zoomed back in front, 40-35, but with senior point guard Katie Pascale on the bench, C-NS countered with a 10-0 run to take the lead for good.
Alexandra Miller hit a go-ahead 3-pointer, part of her eight points in the fourth quarter that, along with Mackenzie White’s 11 points, helped the Northstars pull it out.
On B’ville’s side, Sydney Huhtala gained 15 points, while Jordan Roy had eight points. Ola Bednarczyk finished with seven points and Kyrah Wilbur got seven points.
B’ville did not look ahead to C-NS, focusing last Tuesday on its trip to Corcoran where it rolled out to a 48-20 lead by the end of the third quarter on the way to defeating the Cougars 61-39.
All 10 Bees players that saw action got on the scoreboard, Huhtala getting 15 points, just as she would against C-NS. Bednarczyk and Hannah Mimas each had 10 points, with Megan Brecht getting six points.
B’ville would get a week to recover and learn from the C-NS loss before it plays Friday at Fayetteville-Manlius, already looking forward to its Feb. 13 rematch with the Northstars that closes the regular season.
