LYNN — Things didn’t exactly unfold the way they were planned for the St. Mary’s girls basketball team in the quarterfinal of the Division 3 North state tournament, but the end result didn’t change much. A big second half lifted the No. 1 Spartans to a 75-45 win over No. 8 Austin Prep Friday at Tony Conigliaro Gymnasium.
St. Mary’s had to overcome plenty in this one, including some uncharacteristic mistakes, injuries to key players, first-half foul trouble and most importantly a Cougars team that came ready to play.
“We did some things that we haven’t really done all year,” Spartans coach Jeff Newhall said. “Not making excuses but we haven’t played in two weeks, our best defender, one of our leaders, Gabby Torres didn’t play. Nicolette (D’Itria) got hurt in the middle of the second quarter and we were in foul trouble. You could’ve put seven things on the board and said, ‘if they go wrong you’re going to have a problem.’ All seven did.
“And I give Austin Prep credit,” Newhall said. “I thought they played extremely well. They came in here with a plan. They didn’t come in here and just lay over. They fought us for two and a half quarters.”
The Spartans’ depth was on full display, with four players reaching double digits in scoring. Yirsy Queliz (game-high 14 points, six rebounds) and Alyssa Grossi (10 points, five rebounds) stepped up in a big way while Maiya Bergdorf (11 points, nine rebounds) and Olivia Matela (13 points, two rebounds) also made key plays.
“We got some good contributions all the way around,” Newhall said. “Alyssa Grossi was excellent all night for us defensively. She scored some points, had rebounds. Pej’ae (Parent) went in in the third quarter and played some defense on their point guard. Yirsy got it going. It wasn’t really the way we would normally draw it up, but to have the struggles that we had and still score 75 points is pretty good.”
Both teams traded leads back and forth in the first. The Spartans had to shake off some rust with seven first-quarter turnovers and seven lead changes in the first eight minutes. Matela’s 3-pointer in the final seconds gave St. Mary’s an 18-16 edge before the second.
Things stayed tight before the half. Catherine Bravo and D’itria (seven points) traded threes to give each team a lead in the opening minutes. St. Mary’s ended the quarter on a 9-2 run, capped off by a three from Van Nguyen (six points), to go into the break up 30-24.
“At halftime, the moral of the story was just settle down and play the way we had been playing all year,” Newhall said. “(Our team) was trying to score 40 points on one shot and win a state championship by halftime. I told them, ‘just relax. Play the game. The other team wants to win too.'”
The Spartans bumped the lead up to 10 to start the third before back-to-back Austin Prep threes got things tight again. But that was as close as the Cougars would get for the rest of the night.
Matela knocked down another 3-pointer after a small St. Mary’s run to stretch the Spartans lead to 42-32. It was smooth sailing from there thanks to a strong defensive effort and the Spartans stretched their lead to 55-36 by the fourth.
Grossi had a big fourth quarter, scoring seven points in the frame to help bump the Spartans lead to as much as 30 points to cap off the win.
St. Mary’s (21-2) will face another familiar Catholic Central League foe — No. 4 Bishop Fenwick — in the Division 3 North semifinal at a date and time to be determined.
