Raiders power their way past St. Mary’s

LAWRENCE – It was a devastating 4:56 stretch of basketball that turned a game between two of the state’s premier girls basketball teams into a runaway.Central Catholic used that 4:56 that bridged the end of the second and into the third quarter to go on a 16-0 run that broke the back of St. Mary’s at Memorial Gymnasium on Monday as the Raiders took a 63-44 win in a battle of powerhouses.”That last two minutes of the first half just killed us,” St. Mary’s coach Jeff Newhall said. “It was 27-24 and we were right in the game. It just took all the momentum we had away and killed us mentally a little bit.”Another thing that hurt the Spartans (10-2) all night was Central’s dominance on the glass and in the paint. All season long St. Mary’s has lived under the basket but on Monday, the Raiders beat the Spartans at their own game.Led by sophomore Casey McLaughlin’s 18 points, Central scored 48 of its 63 points from 10 feet and in while limiting the Spartans’ post players – Tori Faieta and Cassi Amenta – to just 23 combined points.”Casey continues to improve with every game,” Raiders coach Sue Downer said. “She works so hard and never takes one possession off and her improvement has been huge for us.”The Raiders came out of the gates in a hurry as Gabie Polce, who did a fantastic job of singing the national anthem before the contest, had six early points to stake her team to an 11-4 lead midway through the opening stanza.St. Mary’s fought back as Faieta had five first-quarter points to help St. Mary’s cut the deficit to 19-14 after one. Central would push the lead back up to seven on two occasions in the second quarter before the Spartans clawed their way back and made it 27-24 with 2:57 left in the half on a pair of Kirsten Ferrari free throws.The Spartans, however, had expended a lot of energy in trying to come back and Downer sensed that on the Central bench.”We saw that they were getting tired at the end of the half so we switched to our zone pressure defense and it paid off,” Downer said.It paid off in a massive way as Melissa Miller, who quietly had 16 points, and McLaughlin quickly extended the lead out to 11. And when Polce hit a jumper just before time expired, the Raiders headed to the locker room up 37-24.”That’s why they are a Division 1 state championship contender,” Newhall said. “We fell apart mentally at the end of the half and they took advantage of it.”The Raiders kept the pedal down at the beginning of the third quarter as Miller and McLaughlin teamed to score Central’s first 10 points to blow the game open at 47-26.Central’s lead grew to as much as 55-28 late in the third before the Spartans put up a 13-0 run over the final minutes of the third and into the fourth to get as close as 55-41.”We play a lot of kids and I think that paid off for us in the first half,” Downer said. “I have a lot of respect for what Jeff does at St. Mary’s and it’s a great game for us to play. It lets us know what we are doing well and what we need to work on.”