Defense keys St. Mary’s girls basketball over Fenwick

LYNN – The St. Mary’s girls basketball team isn’t picky when it comes to getting wins. Pretty or ugly, the Spartans will take the victory.This was never more apparent than in the Spartan’s 38-24 victory over Catholic Central League foe Bishop Fenwick Friday at the Conigliaro Gym.Click here for a photo gallery of lastl night’s game”Overall it was not a pretty night,” said St. Mary’s coach Jeff Newhall of his team’s performance. “You set out to win games though, and even if it’s ugly, you take the victory and move on.”Still without star player Brianna Rudolph, the Spartans (6-4) needed others to step up in such an important conference game. Senior captain Ann Marie Idusuyi made sure she did just that, turning in a seven-point, 17 rebound performance, as well as adding six blocks.”Ann Marie was great tonight, I thought she altered shots all game long and contributed a bit on offense as well. We have been without Brianna for seven games now and we also didn’t have Emily Doyle was out so we were undermanned, but the girls did the little things,” said Newhall.The Lady Spartans turned in a stingy defensive first quarter, holding the Crusaders (5-4) to just two points. Fenwick fought back in the second quarter, getting baskets from four different players, before getting their first lead (10-9) with 3:27 remaining in the half.St. Mary’s fought right back however, getting four made free-throws from Sophia Holmes and Jennie Mucciarone (10 points) respectively before Rachel Stueve extended the lead to five. Fenwick’s Rose Fantozzi hit a runner with 1.5 seconds remaining, leaving her team trailing by three at the half.By this point, Newhall realized that if his team was to come out with a victory, it was going to take a tremendous effort to cover up an ugly first half.”I told them it was going to be one of those nights. It was going to be sloppy and ugly but no matter what we have to keep playing.” He continued, “at that point we couldn’t have played much worse but we were still up.”Idusuyi really dug in on defense to open the second half, and with the offense committing numerous turnovers, its lucky she did. A Sharell Sanders (7 points) basket got the lead back to five before a Mucciarone three-pointer and a long two from Holmes put the lady Spartans up 8 with 2:00 to go in the third quarter.With Idusuyi pulling down every rebound within her reach, St. Mary’s began putting the game out of reach. With 5:38 remaining, the captain recovered her own missed free-throw and converted the put back stretching the lead to 13 (33-20).”We couldn’t have really played any worse tonight but we played through the mistakes. We held them to 24 points and any time you do that you’re probably going to win,” said Newhall. “Our offense was sloppy and I give Fenwick credit for that, they played good man to man defense and took away what we wanted to do most of the night.”