When they announce the pairings for the Section III Class B girls basketball playoffs on Wednesday, the Skaneateles Lakers, after a 14-6 regular season, will be there again, but will face a steep and difficult path to the title.
The presence of so many state-ranked sides, including defending champion Westhill, South Jefferson, Bishop Ludden and Sherburne-Earlville, not to mention other strong teams like Bishop Grimes and General Brown, makes the Lakers wary about any possible match-up, depending on which seed it gets.
Another of those strong teams, Hannibal, reinforced this point last Monday night when the Warriors hosted Skaneateles and took full advantage of an ill-timed slump from the visiting Lakers to prevail by a 52-45 margin.
These same teams had met Dec. 14, at Skaneateles, and the Lakers won that meeting, 48-40, but the rematch took a different course following an active first quarter where both sides were able to convert often and were tied, 16-16.
During the ensuing eight minutes, Skaneateles went cold, only getting five points, and Hannibal grabbed a 28-21 lead. From there, the rest of the game followed a closely fought pattern as the Warriors kept answering every time the Lakers tried to catch up.
Olivia Dobrovosky led Skaneateles with 16 points. Shannon Foehl finished with 12 points, while Chloe Metz had nine points. But the Lakers could not contain Hannibal’s duo of Sydney Alton, who had 23 points (including nine crucial free throws), and Katie Pitcher, who had 18 points, six of them from the foul line.
One more regular-season game remained, with Skaneateles visiting Jordan-Elbridge on Thursday night. And it proved quite encouraging for the Lakers, who got a career-best point total from Bailey Herr and rolled to a 67-49 victory over the Eagles.
Right from the opening tip, Herr and her teammates would puncture J-E’s defenses, and steadily build a lead. By halftime, the margin was 37-23, and if that wasn’t enough, the Lakers outscored the Eagles 20-9 in the third quarter to clinch matters.
Herr, converting on 11 field goals, finished the night with 22 points without a free throw or 3-pointers, but she got plenty of help.
Dobrovosky had 14 points, while Foehl produced 10 points. Metz (seven points), Maddy Pinckney (six points), Riley Pascal (five points) and Bridget Neumann (three points) made contributions, too as, for J-E, Emily Klock had 12 points and Alexis Braun added 10 points.
