SYRACUSE – Staring at a pattern of recent adverse history, not to mention a 27-year championship drought, the Baldwinsville girls basketball team was dead-set on conquering all of it.
Once more, the Bees challenged Cicero-North Syracuse for the Section III Class AA championship last Saturday night at SRC Arena, and once more it ended in heartbreak.
B’ville’s 53-45 defeat to the Northstars reinforced all that had gone on the previous two years, dating all the way back to the 2020 sectional final that C-NS won days before COVID-19 shut everything down.
The Bees again could not top the Northstars during an abbreviated 2021 season, and when they met twice this winter, both games were close – and both were claimed by C-NS.
This was the night it was all supposed to change. Steeled by its last-minute victory over Rome Free Academy in the Feb. 27 sectional semifinal, B’ville was prepared, mature and ready to, at last, get the best of the Northstars.
When Ola Bednarczyk scored the game’s first five points and B’ville made some early defensive stops, no one could have guessed that it would be the largest lead the Bees would hold all night.
It stayed close through the first three quarters, with several ties and lead changes. Defensively, B’ville was most effective in taking away the threat of C-NS’s leading scorer, Alexa Kulakowski, who until the game’s final minutes was limited to a single 3-pointer.
On the other end, Bednarczyk and Carlie Young accounted for most of the Bees’ offense in the first half, the pair hitting on back-to-back baskets right before the break to push B’ville in front again, 22-21.
Faced with a similar situation trailing 33-29 in the last minute of the third quarter, the Bees hit for six straight points and went back in front, 35-33.
What it could not have foreseen was how C-NS, at the start of the final period, would adjust its defense to take away drives to the post and force the Bees into off-balance shots that constantly missed the target.
In fact, more than six minutes would pass before Kyrah Wilbur’s free throws broke what had turned into a 10-0 C-NS run, led, as the team had been all night, by Alita Carey-Santangelo, who would finish with 23 points.
Bednarczyk’s 3-pointer and a pair of free throws pulled the Bees within three, 45-42, in the closing minute, but the Northstars hit all eight of its free throws down the stretch to put it away.
For the night, Bednarczyk had 16 points, while fellow senior Sydney Huhtala was mostly contained, though she matched Young with eight points as Pyle got six points.
C-NS advanced to face Albany in this Saturday’s Class AA regional final, while B’ville would deal with the end of a 16-5 season and the departure of Huhtala, Bednarczyk, Pyle and Gretchen Perine.
