Holding top seeds in their respective Section III girls basketball playoff brackets, West Genesee and Bishop Ludden both emerged with decisive victories – one based on collective brilliance, the other featuring an individual tour de force.
For the Wildcats, last Tuesday night’s Class AA quarterfinal brought full payback for what happened in last year’s sectional final as it leaned again on stifling defense to knock out no. 8 seed Cicero-North Syracuse 53-25 for its 17th win in a row.
So much had changed since the Northstars beat the Wildcats 60-24 in last March’s sectional Class AA final, which was C-NS’s eighth sectional title in a row. Having lost twice to WG in the regular season, C-NS hoped, at the very least, to make things more stressful the third time around.
Instead, the Northstars ran into the steel trap of WG’s defense and would not get out for quite a while. Following a pair of early baskets, C-NS did not score for the rest of the first half.
On possession after possession, the Northstars were pressured into bad shots and other mistakes, while the Wildcats took those mistakes and converted them into enough baskets for a 28-4 halftime edge.
The drought continued for more than 15 minutes before C-NS got on the board again in the third quarter, far too late to do much about avoiding its first sectional post-season defeat since 2008, when Breanna Stewart was still an eighth-grader.
No single WG player had a breakout offensive performance, but 10 different Wildcats got on the scoreboard, led by Madison Smith, who had 14 points. Mackenzie Smith finished with seven points, while Aleysha Castanon hit a pair of 3-pointers to account for six points and Olivia Davoli got five points.
Nia Williams had seven points for C-NS, who finished with a 7-12 record. Julianna Vassallo and Aniah Ingram each got five points.
Bishop Ludden took a different approach in its Class B quarterfinal against no. 8 seed Utica-Notre Dame as Danielle Rauch put together one of the best games of her already storied high school career to help the Gaelic Knights eliminate the no. 8 seed Jugglers 75-53.
Rauch began her rampage midway through the first quarter with a series of baskets, including a 3-pointer, that erased UND’s early 8-6 lead. By the time she sank a basket in the closing seconds of the period to extend her team’s lead to 23-10, Rauch already had 13 points.
As the margin grew to 37-18 by halftime and then stretched to 54-28 by the latter stages of the third period, Rauch was, for a long time, outscoring the Jugglers all by herself.
That could not last, but between her aggressive moves to the basket and the equal amount of energy she spent chasing down and diving for loose balls while also crashing the glass and dishing timely passes to her teammates, it was all too much for the Jugglers to handle.
It was, in fact, close to a quadruple-double, Rauch finishing with 35 points, 11 steals, eight rebounds and eight assists. Not to be ignored, Aurora Deshaies chimed in with 16 points and 11 rebounds as Meg Sierotnik got nine points and six rebounds and Ally Weigand got eight points, four assists and seven rebounds. Laura Patulski contributed six points and five rebounds.
As Ludden moved ahead in the sectional Class B tournament, so did no. 6 seed Westhill, the defending champions, who took a step closer to a title shot when it went to no. 3 seed Hannibal and won this Warrior playoff showdown by a 51-46 margin.
These same teams had met more than two months ago, on Dec. 2. Westhill won then, 55-45, and were confident not just because of that outcome, but because it had a trio of players (Mackenzie Martin, Morgan Elmer and Katelyn Karleski) well versed in post-season pressure, having reached the 2016 state title game.
Here, against Hannibal, that translated into a tight back-and-forth battle where the two sides were tied, 7-7, though one period, but Westhill inched in front during the game’s middle stages and stayed there by answering every single time Hannibal tried to catch up.
The inside-outside Westhill game flourished as Martin worked in the paint for 18 points and Elmer matched that total by hitting on three 3-pointers. Karleski added seven points as Hannibal lost despite 19 points from Katie Pitcher, 12 points from Mckenzie Mattison and 10 points from Sydney Alton.
In Sunday’s Class B semifinals at Onondaga Community College, Ludden meets no. 4 seed South Jefferson at 2:45 at SRC Arena. Right after that, at adjacent Allyn Hall, Westhill confronts no. 2 seed Bishop Grimes just as West Genesee, in the main arena, meets no. 4 seed Utica Proctor in the AA semifinals.
