PEABODY — It’s always a tight battle when the St. Mary’s and Fenwick girls basketball teams share the court for a Catholic Central League match. Friday night, a pair of big runs by St. Mary’s in the second and fourth quarters, respectively, were the difference in a 59-48 road win.
“I certainly give a lot of credit to (Fenwick),” St. Mary’s coach Jeff Newhall said. “On the flip side, we’ve won 15 in a row and I told our team, you’re going to get everybody’s best shot. So we have to be prepared for that and we did enough to get by.”
St. Mary’s struggled at the start but an 11-point run to end the first half put the Spartans in the driver’s seat. Another 11-point run to start the fourth quarter helped lock things up down the stretch.
“It wasn’t our best night,” Newhall said. “But it’s a rivalry game, we’re on the road and we’re certainly happy to get out of here with a win. I thought Fenwick did a good job dictating the pace of the game. We like to play a little bit quicker, more in transition but they did a good job defensively. They got us to make some bad decisions and force some bad shots.”
Olivia Matela (team-high 15 points) and Gabby Torres (13 points, three rebounds, four steals) each had big games for the Spartans. Maiya Bergdorf added 12 points.
Fenwick brought its A-game for most of the night but whenever the Crusaders made a mistake St. Mary’s was there to make them pay.
“What we take out of this is we can play with them, we just have to limit those runs,” Fenwick coach Adam DeBaggis said. “We still haven’t played a 32-minute game. We played about a 30-minute game (Friday). But it was those two minutes that killed us.”
Annie Murphy notched a double-double with 16 points and 11 rebounds for the Crusaders. Veronica Tache (11 points) and Liz Gonzalez (10) also made key plays.
The Crusaders got out to a solid start in the first quarter edging out St. Mary’s 11-8 before a late Spartans push. Matela scored five straight points to end the frame and put St. Mary’s ahead 15-13.
The second quarter saw four lead changes with the Crusaders carrying a 21-20 lead before St. Mary’s big run. After a quick basket, the Spartans grabbed three straight steals (two from Torres) and scored on each. Torres capped off the half with a 3-pointer at the buzzer to stretch the lead to 31-21.
“You can’t have mental lapses like that,” DeBaggis said. “That was all mental. My assistant coach was saying that and he was right. Were still playing hard, still playing pretty good defense but just made some stupid mental mistakes back-to-back-to-back. Their bench is screaming, we’re turning the ball over, we just had to stay poised.”
Fenwick started to chip away at the lead in the second half, getting within three points before St. Mary’s went on another 11-point run to go ahead 49-35 midway through the fourth.
Any chance the Crusaders had to regain some momentum and mount a comeback were silenced by late 3’s from Torres and Matela to seal the deal for St. Mary’s.
“I think we actually slowed down for a second and spaced the floor,” Newhall said. “They were forcing the pace and bunching us up on one side. We had three guards on one side and we really just needed to get someone up top and two wing players. I thought when we were properly spaced we got good shots.”
The Spartans (15-1) will look to keep their win streak going with another CCL tilt at Archbishop Williams Monday (6:30) while Fenwick (8-4) hosts Danvers Tuesday (5:30).
