Jamesville-DeWitt and Whitesboro’s girls basketball teams have made post-season meetings an annual event – and recently, that’s meant the Red Rams finishing the night with another Section III Class A championship in its possession.
So it was again Saturday night at Onondaga Community College’s SRC Arena. Again, the Warriors provided stern opposition but, again, J-D won, this time in a 40-34 decision that netted a fourth consecutive sectional title.
Other than giving up the game’s first basket, the Rams never trailed, but it never got comfortable, either. Whitesboro constantly moved within striking distance, but on every occasion J-D turned them back and held on to its slim lead.
And the foundation of it, as always, was defense, with J-D holding Whitesboro without a field goal for nearly five minutes in the fourth quarter when the outcome was very much in doubt.
“When our shots aren’t falling, we can always count on our defense,” said senior forward Alyssa Robens.
No one symbolized the game’s tough nature more than Robens. Late in the first quarter, a collision with a Whitesboro player forced Robens off the court with a bruised knee, but she returned in time to start the second half and played the rest of the way
Even without Robens, J-D authored a long shutout streak in the second quarter, Whitesboro not scoring a point in the first seven-plus minutes of that period.
Yet the Warriors’ own stubborn resistance was also on display, as it controlled the boards on both ends and hurt the Rams with its length. At halftime, J-D only had a 21-14 lead.
Quickly, the second half settled into a conflict where every single possession was a challenge on both ends of the floor, and that would help Whitesboro make it very stressful for the Rams.
The Warriors pulled within four, 28-24, late in the third quarter, but Carly O’Hern’s basket, followed by Meg Hair’s steal and layup in the final seconds of the period, doubled the margin.
Unfazed, Whitesboro scored six straight points at the start of the fourth quarter to get within a basket, 32-30. But Maddy Frank countered, hitting a big 3-pointer with 5:09 left.
One more time, the Warriors pushed and got within three, 37-34, with under a minute left, and tried full-court pressure. J-D broke that press, though, and Robens hit an open lay-up to helped seal another sectional title for the Rams.
O’Hern led J-D with 12 points and was named the sectional tournament’s MVP, but the fact that everyone in the starting five – O’Hern, Frank, Hair, Robens and Angela Bussone, along with reserves Julia Kelner and MaryKate Scheftic, could make important plays makes the Rams more dangerous.
“We have seven girls that are as good as anyone else,” said J-D head coach Rob Siechen.
Now those Rams will return to the state tournament, where it will face Section II champion Averill Park Friday night at 6 p.m. in the opening round of the regional playoffs at Troy’s Hudson Valley Community College. Just as J-D was beating Whitesboro, Averill Park needed to rally from a 14-point deficit to beat Troy 58-56 in its sectional title game.
J-D will need two regional victories – one over Averill Park, and then one over the Section VII/X survivor on Saturday, to return to HVCC for the March 20-21 state final four.
