WOBURN — Sometimes, it just isn’t meant to be.
That was the case Wednesday night for the Peabody girls basketball team, which concluded the season with a 51-29 loss to Chelmsford in the Woburn Tournament consolation.
The good news for the Tanners was they received outstanding efforts from the only Tanner seniors, captains Jordan Muse and Serena Laro, in their final time donning Peabody blue.
“We missed nine free throws in the first half, and even though we couldn’t break the trap and turned the ball over too much, had we made our free throws it would have been an entirely different game,” said Peabody coach Stan McKeen.”It was an extremely frustrating game. Basically, all we did tonight was just show up but our two seniors played their hearts out. They knew it was their last two games and they wanted it and played like they wanted it.”
Both teams got off to slow starts. The game’s first points were scored by Catherine Manning (10 points) about two minutes in. After the Lions’ Hannah Polce hit a jumper to make it 2-2, senior captain Jordan Muse (6 points) drained a 3-pointer to give Peabody the lead, 5-2. A steal and free throw by Kate Krueger closed the gap to 5-3, then a pair of free throws by Manning gave the Tanners what turned out to be their largest lead of the game, 7-3 with 4:15 to go in the quarter.
Peabody turned the ball on five of its final six possessions to close out the quarter. Laro (10 rebounds) kept the Tanners in the game over that stretch with some strong play off the boards at both ends of the court.
The first quarter with ended in a 7-7 tie.
The Lions closed the half with a 12-5 run to go into halftime with a 24-12 lead.
“We definitely got off to a slow start in the first quarter, a very slow start,” said Chelmsford coach Kevin Branco. “But we picked it up in the second quarter. We did a much better job fronting their No. 3 (Manning). We also opened up the floor and had pressure off our zone trap and forced a lot of turnovers, especially in the first half. Defensively, we really stepped it up, then got right back to it in the second half.”
Chelmsford forced a turnover with a triple team on Manning, then didn’t skip a beat after Muse knocked down her second 3-pointer of the game. They went on a 21-5 run to close out the third quarter and take a 21-point lead, 41- 20, into the final eight minutes.
Peabody got the lead to under 20, 41-22, on a Kristina Rossignoll (8 points) jumper with 6:38 to play but that was as close as the Tanners came.
“We have been making our free throws all year long, but at the end of this year we just weren’t getting to the line, and even when we did we weren’t making them,” said McKeen. “Not having Liz Zaiter (who was on crutches) was a big factor, we missed her. She is a big offensive weapon and absolutely a factor on defense as well, but she just wasn’t right the rest of the way yesterday after getting hurt. She got banged under the basket and came down hard on her knee, and really she just could not go today.”
Muse was also playing injured, still suffering the after effects of a broken nose suffered last week, but McKeen said he was proud of the way she and Laro performed in their final game.
“Serena played very well off the boards tonight. She’s a senior, it was her last game and she really wanted it and so did Jordan,” he said. “She’s playing with a fractured nose, she gets into foul trouble, yet gives you 200 percent on the court all the time. She has been playing with it for more than a week and is having surgery on it tomorrow, yet she still gave us 200 percent all the time.”
Peabody finished the season 8-12.
