With the Classical girls basketball team clinging to a tenuous lead, and time ticking off the fourth quarter clock, Hannah Byrne struck a dagger into the hearts of the Beverly Panthers.Byrne took a pass just to the right side of the key, deftly spun around, and hit a leaning layup, got fouled, and hit the shot. That gave the Rams breathing room en route to a 52-46 victory – their first of the year.”I told the girls it wasn’t pretty, but a win’s a win,” said a relieved coach Tom Sawyer afterward. “It’s always good to get the first one.”Byrne, a junior, was easily the offensive star of the game, hitting 21 points, nine of them on free throws.”She’s strong,” said Sawyer, “and she can go to the hoop. She’s going to get a lot of those three-pointers (conventional).”Also contributing offensively for the Rams was Diamond Doe, who, despite a cold start, ended up with 15 points. Her ball-handling and her defense, however, were crucial to the win, and Classical – which never trailed – seemed most threatened when she had to spend a long stretch on the bench after picking up her fourth foul midway through the third quarter.”Hannah and Diamond are our leaders,” said Sawyer. “They had a combined 36 points tonight.”Despite the win, Sawyer wasn’t happy with the number of shots the Rams missed.”We had a lot of opportunities that we missed,” he said. “That’s something we’ll have to work on. But it was nice to come back after – I think – a sub-par game against Peabody.”Even though Classical had leads of 11 and 12 points, the Rams were never truly comfortable. When it was 19-8 in the second quarter, Beverly heated up and – with the help of Jen Ashton and her 17 points, whittled the lead down to five points (24-19) by halftime.Classical, thanks mainly to Byrne and Doe, got the lead back up to 12 points (37-25), at which point Beverly put up a frantic full-court press that seemed to rattle the Rams at times.At the same time, Doe had to go to the bench with her fourth foul, and – just to make sure things didn’t get too serene – Kiki McKenna started to get hot for Beverly (she scored all of her seven points in the final quarter).Slowly, Beverly crept back into the game in the final eight minutes, and when Allie Murray hit a free throw, the Panthers were only four points (43-39) with plenty of time (2:36) to go.But on the trip back down the floor, Byrne took the pass and lunged for the basket, making it 45-39, and the ensuing free throw put Classical up by seven.Doe, by this time back in the game, hit a medium-range jump shot and followed that up with a pair of free throws and all of a sudden, the lead was up to 11 (50-39) with just over a minute to go.But that wasn’t the end of it. Ashton hit a bucket and Katie Moriarty (13 points) hit a three-pointer shortly afterward, and the lead was back down to six (50-44). But by then, it was too late for Beverly to make any real inroads, and when Byrne hit two more free throws with 24 seconds left, Classical could finally breathe easily.