Lady Tigers Start the Post Season Friday Against New Rochelle
Three months of practice and a little over two months of games now are culminating in the sectional playoffs for the Lady Tigers beginning this Friday. The goal is rather simple: win or your season is over.
The Lady Tigers enter the Sectional Tournament not playing their best ball of the winter. After having their winning streak snapped by New Rochelle two weeks earlier the Lady Tigers closed out with the regular season beating Mamaroneck last Wednesday on Senior Day 51-41 in a game that was a lot closer than the final score indicated.
“We just couldn’t seem to get it going. We couldn’t seem to get all five people playing on all the same page out there until the fourth quarter. At this point you have to come ready to play every minute of the game so that was a little disappointing today,” said Lady Tigers head coach Sue Adams on her team’s performance against Mamaroneck.
After losing to New Rochelle, Adams and her staff worked the team hard in practice in an effort to clean up their weaknesses before the Sectional Tournament begins. Adams didn’t see the effort she had hoped for against Mamaroneck.
“I don’t think we really responded because we spent a lot of time on defense and I felt we didn’t have the intensity we were looking for today from some of our players,” said Adams. “We also have been working on pushing the ball but if we don’t rebound we can’t run and that was a big issue.”
One of the highlights of the game came early in the second quarter when senior guard Sofia Roman scored a basket and was fouled. With the basket Roman reached a very special plateau in her playing career: 1000 total points. There was a brief pause in the game and Roman was giving special balloons to commemorate her achievement.
This game remained very close – 33-30 in favor of the Lady Tigers with one quarter to play. At the start of the quarter something ignited their offense and the Lady Tigers scored 10-straight points to put the game out of reach and finish the regular season with a record of 14-4.
Senior guard Kim Hanlon led all scorers with 25 points while Roman finished with 20 point. Adams praised the play of her senior guards after the Mamaroneck victory.
“They’re just tremendous. We talked about it in the locker room,” said Adams. “Out of 51 points the two of them had 45 points. You can’t ask anything more for them but that is a problem because we do need other people to step up and grab some offensive rebounds. We can’t expect them to score that much because its just not going to be to our advantage in the long run.”
Before the Mamaroneck game the White Plains High School community honored the four seniors who had their final home game with flowers and a short biography of their careers for the Lady Tigers. The seniors that were honored were Hanlon, Roman, forward Brittney Fields and team manager Erin Locascio.
Sectional Tournament Round 1 Game Against New Rochelle
This Friday the Lady Tigers will host the New Rochelle Huguenots in the first round of the sectional tournament. If they are successful against the Huguenots the Lady Tigers would play their second game next Tuesday, most likely away at a higher seeded team.
The Lady Tigers split two games with Huguenots this winter. Each team won on their home court. The best players for the Huguenots are Aaliyah Hayes, Briana Rhetti and Mary Miceli. Hayes had a combined 35 points in the two games against the Lady Tigers. Miceli had 18 points in their most recent game on Feb. 2 when the Huguenots were victorious by the score of 63-55.
There are several key factors that will determine the outcome of this contest. One number to keep in mind is 50. Three (Peeskill, Mount Vernon and New Rochelle) of the Lady Tigers four losses came when they gave up over 50 points to their opponents.
Another thing to keep in mind come the playoffs is scoring balance. The Lady Tigers probably won’t advance far in the playoff if Hanlon and Roman have to do 90 percent of the team’s scoring like they did in the win over Mamaroneck. Fields, junior Alyssa Ghilardi and sophomore Tess D’Arcy need to step up their offense a little to take some pressure off Roman and Hanlon. All three players have proved they can score by each having games in double figures this winter.
One of the ways to improve team scoring is rebounding. Hanlon, Fields and Ghilardi are the key rebounders for the Lady Tigers. By getting rebounds on both ends of the floor it will allow the Lady Tigers to control and then push the tempo on offense. An up-tempo offense should allow the Lady Tigers a solid chance of getting quality shots. They need to hit more mid-range jump shots and shots under the basket rather than rely on the 3-point shooting skills of Roman, Hanlon and D’Arcy.
A potential problem for the Lady Tigers is foul trouble. Adams this season only uses her bench if she absolutely needs too, so her bench players haven’t seen too much action this year.
If the Lady Tigers keeps the game up tempo, successfully implement their full-court press on defense, rebound well and make their mid range shots they can be a very dangerous team in the sectional tournament.
Peter Gerken is a Westchester County native and has published previously with The Patent Trader and the Bronxville Review Press. While attending Boston College he was the sports editor of the university’s newspaper, The Heights, and served as a staff writer for the Boston College sports publication Eagle Action. He can be reached at pgerken@theexaminernews.com.
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