ONONDAGA COUNTY –
For all the times they have met in the regular season, the Cicero-North Syracuse and Liverpool girls basketball teams rarely have encountered one another with stakes like this.
It’s the top-seeded Northstars against the no. 4 seed Warriors in Sunday’s Section III Class AA semifinal at Onondaga Community College’s Allyn Hall. The winner will meet Baldwinsville or Rome Free Academy in the March 5 sectional final.
To get there, both had to win quarterfinal games at home Tuesday night – and of the two, C-NS had far more stress, its 51-39 victory over no. 8 seed Fayetteville-Manlius not reflecting, at least in its final margin, how tough the game was.
C-NS had beaten the Hornets twice in the regular season. One of them was a 39-38 thriller on Dec. 23. The other was a 62-16 romp late in January, but F-M didn’t have its leading scorer, Ava Angello, in the lineup.
Angello’s presence made the playoff game more resemble the one in December, a tense, back-and-forth battle where the Northstars led most of the way, yet could not draw clear.
Patient on offense, F-M found good looks and had success inside thanks to Angello, who finished with 19 points, and Evie Kawa, who put in 12 points.
When Kawa converted with 3:10 left, the Hornets only trailed 43-38, but it would get no closer as C-NS kept anything from going in down the stretch and, for the entire fourth quarter, limited the visitors to just two field goals.
On the other end, Alexa Kulakowski carried the Northstars for large portions of the game, hitting on all kinds of shots and finishing with 26 points as Alita Carey-Santangelo overcame early foul trouble to put in 12 points. Brayden Schultz finished with eight points.
By contrast, Liverpool was downing no. 5 seed Utica Proctor 52-30 in a game that, while not as lopsided as the Warriors’ 61-27 win over the Raiders in January, still was never in serious doubt.
All through the first half, Liverpool shut down most of what Proctor tried to establish, steadily building a 29-12 lead by intermission.
And even when the Raiders played a strong third quarter and moved within range, 37-30, the Warriors replied by shutting out Proctor for the entire final period, netting 15 unanswered points.
Naveah Wingate again led the way, finishing with 22 points, helped mostly by Julia Wike, who had 10 points. No Proctor player scored in double figures as Emma Cohen paced the Raiders with nine points.
