LYNN — Basketball is a game of matchups as much as it is anything else, and Saturday, the Classical girls basketball team had no answer for Wilmington’s Caroline Andersen.
As a result, the No. 8 Wildcats stunned top-seeded Classical in a Division 2 North quarterfinal, 64-58.
Andersen, a senior, scored 21 points. Only four of them came as the result of baskets. The rest came on free throws — and most of them came after she’d collected offensive rebounds.
“I thought (Irianis) Delgado did a great job of containing her within the context of their offense,” said Classical coach Tom Sawyer, “but we couldn’t keep her off the boards. That was the difference.”
Wilmington, now 15-7 with two wins over Northeastern Conference teams in the tournament (the other one coming against Saugus in the first round), moves on to face Wakefield Wednesday (7) in the semifinal at Tewksbury.
The Wildcats had an easier time putting the ball in the basket than Classical, Sawyer said.
“They were bigger than us,” he said. “And it just seemed to me that we had a tough time getting good looks.
“But we got them,” he said. “I’m proud of how hard our girls worked. But this was a matchup problem for us, especially with No. 14 (Andersen).”
Paris Wilkey scored 24 points in her last-ever game with the Rams, and it was her shooting that help the Rams take a 29-27 lead at the break. But Wilmington very slowly started taking the game over in the third quarter as the pattern began to establish itself: Andersen was tough to move down low, gobbled up rebound after rebound off the offensive glass, and would be fouled going up for the put-back. Even though Classical hit the high-water mark of a 6-point lead (37-31) it unraveled from thereon out as the Wildcats dominated.
“Give them credit,” said Sawyer. “They made more shots than we did.”
By the end of the third, the Wildcats had wiped out that lead and were three points ahead (44-41). They added to it in the fourth quarter, at several points getting the lead up to 10 before Classical whittled away at it at the end.
“Offensively,” said Sawyer, “we scored 58 points. That’s usually a pretty good night’s work for us. But we haven’t given up 64 often this year.”
Delgado finished with 8 points for Classical and Jean Gupton had 7.
