Onondaga — In at least a small way, the easy part is done for the Cicero-North Syracuse girls basketball team – if going 23-0 and earning an eighth consecutive Section III Class AA title could ever be characterized that way.
But the Northstars were heavily favored to dominate all competition in the sectional ranks in 2015-16 and did so, right up to Sunday night’s 60-24 victory over West Genesee in the AA sectional final at SRC Arena.
This brings C-NS right back to where it was a season ago, favored and expected to make a run at a third state championship in program history. In 2015, Bethlehem thwarted those plans in the regional finals, and the Northstars are bent on reversing that result.
What adds to the urgency, of course, is that the core of C-NS’s roster are seniors, including four of the starting five – McKayla Roberts, Beth Bonin, Samantha Tortora and Mary Kate Bonnani, and after many near-misses, they want a happy ending this time.
“We really want to leave with a bang,” said Roberts.
Fittingly enough, Saturday’s AA regional game against the Section II champion, Shenendehowa or Albany, takes place at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, because if C-NS wins, it gets to return to HVCC again for the March 11-12 state final four.
Reaching that point didn’t require much stress in the sectional tournament, whether it was early-round wins over Rome Free Academy (56-29) and Utica Proctor (75-36), or whether it was the title game against an upstart no. 7 seed from West Genesee who had surprised no. 2 seed Fayetteville-Manlius and rallied late to top Liverpool to get this far.
The two regular-season meetings between C-NS and WG had ended with the Northstars prevailing by scores of 66-39 (on Dec. 17) and 66-34 (on Jan. 28). Still, both of those results were closer than most of the league games the Northstars had played.
continued — In short, WG’s dilemma was trying to guess which C-NS starter would get the hot hand, plus getting around the Northstars’ vaunted defense, which had a tendency to disrupt anything an opponent planned to do.
During the first quarter, the Wildcats got much of what it wanted, holding C-NS to one field goal in the first four minutes and holding its own on the boards. But a rash of turnovers helped the Northstars get extra chances and build a 15-4 lead, with Bonin earning eight of those points.
Deep into the second quarter, WG was within single digits, 18-9, but then Roberts, with back-to-back drives for lay-ups plus a 3-pointer, produced seven points during a 10-0 run that accounted for much of the Wildcats’ 30-12 halftime deficit.
Trying to fight back, WG started rushing shots early in the third quarter, which was just what C-NS wanted. The Northstars’ 10-0 run included Bonin throwing a behind-the-back pass to set up an open lay-up for Roberts.
Bonin said that she had tried that pass once before, in a game against Henninger, and it was something that the coaches generally wouldn’t approve, but worked here.
WG did not score a point for nearly five minutes at the start of the third quarter and had just one field goal in the entire period. Meanwhile, Bonin worked her total to 20 points, with Roberts getting 11 points and Free nine points, before the C-NS starters exited early in the fourth quarter.
