Briarcliff Girls Ousted From the Playoffs by Irvington Once Again
By Andy Jacobs
If the past is indeed prologue, then the rivalry between the Briarcliff and Irvington girls’ basketball teams has become as predictable as death and taxes, the phases of the moon and the cycle of the tides.
The latest installment of their seemingly annual playoff clashes took place on Saturday when a large matinee audience looked on as the host Bulldogs used a 13-0 blitz to break open a game that had been tied early in the third quarter on their way to a convincing 49-35 victory in a Section 1, Class B quarterfinal.
Freshman guard Alyson Raimondo scored a game-high 17 points, while senior center Katie LeBuhn finished with 13 points and eight rebounds, leading second-seeded Irvington past the seventh-seeded Bears and into a semifinal matchup against Westlake on Thursday evening. For Briarcliff, which finished up its 2021-22 season with a 14-8 record, Caroline Barbalato scored 15 points and Cat Carrafiello added nine.
“The first quarter hurt us,” said Bears head coach Denise Hamlin shortly after the final buzzer had brought an end to her team’s season. “The first quarter, they were just nervous. Look, when you’re playing Irvington, you’re playing the best of the best that’s out there. So the nerves were real.”
Briarcliff missed its first eight shots from the field and didn’t get on the scoreboard until the game was more than six minutes old. Rebecca Kratz scored on a fast break with 1:44 remaining in the first quarter after making a steal in the backcourt, but the Bears wound up the period just 1-for-13 shooting the ball and committed eight turnovers.
“It’s a nervous place to come to,” said Hamlin about the Bulldogs’ intimidating upstairs home court. “I tried to settle them down. The second quarter, they settled down. But you play a good team and a quarter is too long to give them.”
The Bears, trailing 9-2 after the first eight minutes, got a pair of free throws from both Adriana Scanga and Carrafiello early in the second quarter, then closed to within 13-9 when Barbalato rattled in a long 3-pointer from right of the key with 4:47 left in the half. An old-fashioned 3-point play by Barbalato, who was fouled converting a lefty layup with 1:22 to go, cut the Bulldog lead to 17-14.
With half a minute left in the first half, Barbalato stepped up again for the Bears, draining another deep 3-point shot, this time from straightaway with the shot clock winding down, and Briarcliff, despite its horrendous start, only trailed by a 19-17 margin after the first two quarters.
Just 90 seconds into the second half, the Bears gave their fans reason to think that the outcome against Irvington might be different this time around as Carrafiello received a pass from Kratz and scored on a reverse layup, tying the contest. But they then proceeded to miss their next nine shots from the field and Irvington, which never trailed all afternoon, went on a 13-0 run that all but dashed the Bears’ hopes.
“It was 19-19 and then the wheels fell off,” said Hamlin. “I don’t know what happened. I just couldn’t get them to go anymore. I just couldn’t get ‘em to go. Not for lack of trying. They tried their best. There’s no quit in them.”
Irvington, which hadn’t played a game in over two weeks, took its first double-digit lead of the day when Anders Knapp scored a fast-break layup with 2:25 remaining in the third quarter. With just over a minute left in the period, the towering LeBuhn passed out of a double team to a wide-open Claire Friedlander for another layup that capped the big Bulldog run.
Carrafiello, whose aggressive baseline drives were thwarted time and again by LeBuhn, finally ended a nearly six-minute scoring drought for the Bears with two free throws late in the third quarter. Then with just three seconds remaining, Eliza Aldrich scored on a put-back that brought Briarcliff to within 34-23 heading to the final quarter.
An offensive rebound by Aldrich led to a 10-foot jumper by freshman Ava Makaron, cutting the Irvington lead to 35-25 with 5:34 left in the game. But that was as close as the Bears could get and baskets by LeBuhn late in the fourth quarter twice gave the Bulldogs their largest lead of the game, 14 points. Barbalato provided her fourth 3-pointer of the day with 1:19 to go, but by then it was obvious the Briarcliff season would soon be over.
“Hats off to Irvington, but I adore my kids,” said Hamlin. “I’m gonna give ‘em all a hug, tell ‘em I love them and appreciate everything that they did for me and for each other all season long. We had a lot of obstacles in the way during the season and they overcame just about every single one. So the scoreboard said what it said, but I’ve got a bunch of winners on my team.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
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