Until now, the Cicero-North Syracuse girls basketball team, strong as it was, didn’t know how it would react a defeat.
After racing to a 9-0 start, the Northstars’ perfect run concluded on Jan. 9 with a 67-48 loss to Corcoran, the type of result that can either provide discouragement, or prime motivation to make sure that didn’t happen again.
In CNS’s case, it was obviously the latter, as West Genesee found out in a complete and brutal way during last Tuesday night’s 75-23 destruction.
The margin was astonishing, on so many fronts. WG was not, by any means, an inferior foe, arriving in town with a 10-2 record and a star senior forward, Alyssa Sutherland, on the brink of 1,000 career points.
What trumped all those considerations, though, was the ferocious attitude CNS brought to this game, the anger it felt about losing, and the desire to show that defeat was just a temporary setback.
Sutherland scored the game’s first basket. CNS then reeled off 22 points in a row, its offense coming in all shapes and sizes as the defense suffocated the Wildcats.
Whether it was Kelsey Mattice or Marybeth Egan putting home 3-point shots, or Breanna Stewart’s signature blocks, everything clicked. Once, late in the first quarter, Stewart went out and blocked a shot, then went the length of the court for the lay-up on the other end.
By the time this was done, CNS nearly had six players score in double figures. Egan bounced back from her two-point showing at Corcoran to match Mattice with 12 points, while Brittany Denslow earned 11 points and Stewart got 10 points.
Right behind them, Shannon Hickin and Lindsay Cole both finished with nine points, while Brittany Paul and Ashley Waldron earned six points apiece.
CNS now heads Friday night to Fayetteville-Manlius, wanting to do the same kind of damage to a 9-2 Hornets team whose only two losses both came to Oswego.
