Swampscott girls fight to the finish in close loss to Pentucket

DANVERS – How do you stop a team that holds a height advantage in just about every spot and knows how to use it?Swampscott High girls basketball coach Jack Hughes opted to ratchet up the defense and go at the Sachems like there was no tomorrow. It almost worked. The Big Blue made Pentucket fight for every hoop, and with under a minute remaining, it was a three-point game.The Sachems came up with a couple of big stops and went 4-for-4 from the line in the last 10 seconds to pull out a 60-53 win at St. John’s Prep. They’ll play the winner of tonight’s Winthrop-Weston game in the Division 3 North final at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell on Saturday.”We wanted to be the aggressors,” Hughes said. “I don’t think we could have been much more aggressive than we were. If a few more shots had fallen, we’d be all set, but they didn’t.”The two teams are no strangers to one another. Pentucket gave the Big Blue the heave-ho in the North semifinals last year and earlier this season, the Sachems defeated Swampscott in the championship game of the Haverhill Holiday Tournament.”It was a great game, a great game,” Hughes said. “We played our hearts out. I don’t know what more I can say. They’re a good team. We’re a good team. We gave up a lot of size to that team, but they (his players) didn’t back down for a second. They pressed them and did the best they could.”Pentucket coach John McNamara knew his team would have a battle on its hands.”I think they decided they were going to pressure our guards so we couldn’t look low. They did a good job. They’re a good team. I knew they were going to come up with something to offset the height advantage,” McNamara said.For the first few minutes of the game, it looked like Pentucket was going to have its way with the Big Blue. Swampscott couldn’t get the ball in the paint and its outside shots weren’t falling. When 6-3 junior center Kirsten Daamen came up with a couple of resounding blocks, it appeared the Big Blue might be in for a long night. The Sachems led 10-4 at the end of the quarter, with the Swampscott defense minimizing the damage.The tide started to turn in the second quarter when Allie Beaulieu (13 points) and Kara Gilberg (16 points) started to stir things up a bit. Swampscott went on a 12-1 run that was capped by a Jen Cleary three that put the Big Blue on top, 20-18, for the first time in the game.From that point on, it was a war. The score was tied, 26-26, at the half and the battle continued for much of the third quarter. Cleary opened the second half with a three that put her team up 29-26, but Pentucket’s 5-9 junior forward Andrea Attenasio started to heat up at about the same time. Attenasio had eight third-quarter points and finished with 14.Pentucket sophomore guard Erin McNamara was Swampscott’s nemesis the entire game with her timely shooting from the perimeter. She had 16 points. Daamen finished with 15 points, but she picked up a few fouls and found herself on the bench a couple of times. When she wasn’t putting the ball in the hoop, she was dishing off to Attenasio, who proved almost as tough to stop.Pentucket led 44-39 after three quarters, but the aggressive defense was taking its toll. Tara Gallagher had four fouls at the half and Beaulieu had three. Marissa Gambale and Gilberg each had two at the half.Gilberg was a force down the stretch, scoring eight points in the fourth quarter, including a three that closed the gap to 54-50 with 3:45 remaining. She ended up scoring six straight points in a little over a minute to keep the Big Blue from falling off the pace. Her final hoop made it 54-53.Pentucket’s McNamara scored with 2:29 left to make the score 56-53. Swampscott never got any closer. McNamara hit two free throws with 10 seconds remaining and Holly Jakobsens added two more with 2.8 seconds left to put the game out of reach.The Big Blue were the No. 3 seed heading into the game and Pentucket was the No. 2. seed. Swampscott will graduate four seniors from this team: Katherine Go