St. Mary’s, English girls to tangle again in Boverini hoop final

LYNN – When the planners of the Boverini Basketball Tournament got together earlier this fall, they made the decision to make the girls final the concluding game today, figuring (hoping) that it would be another rematch between English and St. Mary’s.View Photo GalleryIt will be. At 4:30 p.m. today in the Classical gym, the Bulldogs and the Spartans will go at it, with the city championship on the line. The Spartans will be looking for a repeat while the Bulldogs will seek to avenge last year’s loss in the final.The teams would appear to be mirror images of each other. Four years ago, they introduced groups of promising freshmen into the mix … and now that they’ve matured into self-confident seniors, the Bulldogs and Spartans are both ranked in the Top 10 among girls basketball schools in the Boston area.”It’s a big game so early in the season,” says English coach Fred Hogan, “and it’s something we’re all looking forward to.””People wanted to talk about the game before it even happened,” said St. Mary’s Jeff Newhall, “but now that it’s here, we’re really looking forward to it.”Before the two rivals played each other, however, they had to get past their first round opponents, and they both did without a lot of trouble. St. Mary’s dispatched Classical, 77-36 while English defeated Tech, 79-13.The Spartans led from wire to wire, as they clicked on all cylinders until their starters came out of the game in the third quarter. Both Brianna Rudolph (24 points) and Jennie Mucchiarone (23) were on fire in the first half. Rudolph shot and slashed her way to 14 of her points in the first two quarters while Mucchiarone hit four of her five three-pointers in the first 16 minutes on the way to 18 points.Not surprisingly, with that much firepower, the Spartans led 21-5 after one quarter and 44-12 at the half.Still, said Newhall, “I thought we came out kind of sluggish, but once we got going, we picked it up and did fine.”Classical got into a better rhythm in the second half, “and I thought in the final two quarters we executed much better,” said coach Tom Sawyer. “That was our goal … just to execute better.”Despite the one-sided loss, Sawyer saw some silver linings.”I thought Chenysse Hill (10 points) played really well, and Chelsea Rogers is a very cerebral player and did well too. You tell her how to do something once and she remembers.”But,” said Sawyer, “(St. Mary’s) is a hard team to play against. We have some good teams in the Northeastern Conference, and they can certainly stack up well with any of them.”English 79, Tech 13Everybody got into the game for the Bulldogs, as they ran away with this one from the outset. None of the starters played more than a quarter, and as a result Devinya Robinson ended up as the high scorer with 22 points.”This was a tough game to coach,” said Hogan. “We just wanted to make sure everyone on our team got to play.”Also scoring in double figures for the Bulldogs was Catherine Stinson, who had 19; and Deidra Newson, with 17 (“and they must have had all of them in the first quarter,” Hogan said).The rest of the scoring was spread out among the rest of the team, although Rachel Calnan did have eight points.The Tech-Classical consolation game begins at noon at the Classical gym, with the boys consolation and final preceding the Spartan-Bulldogs girls final at 4:30.