English, St. Mary’s reach Boverini girls final

LYNN – For one team, Monday’s semifinals in the Boverini City Championship proved to be a walk in the park. For the other, it was the complete opposite.Yet St. Mary’s and Lynn English, the two favorites coming into the Classical gym on Monday, found their way to the title tilt tonight (4:30).For the Spartans, it was business as usual as they scored the game’s first 14 points and never looked back en route to a 64-24 win over Lynn Tech.English was expected to have the same kind of night against Classical, but the Rams were bound and determined to spoil the party.Classical carried a three-point lead into the fourth quarter before the Bulldogs turned to their trademark defense, holding the Rams to four points in the final eight minutes and getting a pair of clutch rebound baskets from Olivia Dupree in the final two minutes to take the lead and a 40-37 win.Click here for a Boverini photo gallery.”The fourth quarter was kind of our signature,” English coach Fred Hogan said. “We put the clamps down and were able to get some key baskets ? Every time Classical and English play, it’s going to be a war.”The win also came with a big milestone for the Bulldogs as senior guard Jenicia Duggins eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for her career on a 3-point bomb early in the second quarter. The senior needed 11 to reach the mark and finished with a game-high 21.”For her to get 1,000 points is a great individual mark,” Hogan said. “She saw how much it meant to Jeannette (Anderson) last year and she deserves it.”With Duggins within reach of the mark, her teammates tried to help her get the inevitable done as quickly as possible as she scored eight of the Bulldogs’ 13 first-quarter points. But in trying to get Duggins to the milestone, it took English out of its rhythm and allowed the Rams to hang around, trailing by a point after one quarter thanks to a 9-0 run at the end of the period.”We kind of let Jenicia put on a show in the first quarter,” Hogan said. “And that took us a little bit out of our rhythm. We’re a team that shoots first and Jenicia scores.”In the second quarter, Duggins’ milestone three-point shot widened the Bulldogs lead to 21-15. Yet the Rams (1-4) kept the pressure on as a swarming defense never allowed English to get a clean shot away and held the speedy Bulldog transition and fast-break game in check.”The kids played hard on defense,” Classical coach Tom Sawyer said.Diamond Doe and Hannah Byrne also were taking care of the offense for the Rams as Byrne had 10 in the opening half and Doe added six of Classical’s 11 points in the second quarter to send the teams to the half in a 23-23 deadlock.Duggins gave English back the lead early in the third quarter before the Classical defense keyed an 8-0 run that gave the Rams their first lead at 31-25 midway through the third. English cut the gap to 33-30 by quarter’s end.”You have to give Classical a whole lot of credit,” Hogan said. “They came out and played their hearts out and probably deserved to win that game as much as we did.”With it being a four-point game early in the fourth quarter, the Bulldogs cranked up the defensive pressure again and began to frustrate Classical’s offense.Kayla Murkison’s only basket of the game got English on the comeback trail. Duggins added two free throws to tie the game with 4:06 left. Following a Doe free throw, Dupree came up with two huge putbacks on consecutive possessions to give English a three-point lead with 90 seconds left.Duggins added two more free throws moments later to up the lead to five. Byrne’s layup closed it to three but the Rams could get no closer.The opening game was a little less dramatic as St. Mary’s ran out to a 20-2 lead after the first quarter and led 36-12 at halftime.”Our ball movement was very good,” St. Mary’s coach Jeff Newhall said. “And you have to give Tech credit. Their effort was superb for 32 minutes.”Bria Tiro had all of her game-high 15 points in the first half to lead 11 different Spartans who got in the sco