Section 9 Class B girls semifinals

Dawg day afternoon

Sullivan West squanders early lead and ends season at Highland

By RICHARD A. ROSS

HIGHLAND, NY - It wasn’t supposed to end this way, morosely and quietly in a sparsely packed gym only five miles away from the arena where the Lady Bulldogs fully expected to mount the final ascent to try to knock off kingpin John S. Burke in the finals one day hence.

But instead of reaching the mountaintop, Sullivan West stumbled on a foothill as they lost their poise and their moxie in a semifinal meltdown to the defending champion Highland Huskies on March 2.

Following the team’s resonant 55-26 home quarterfinal thrashing of the team that ousted them in last year’s semifinal, the Lady Dukes of Marlboro, on February 27, third-seeded Sullivan West was psyched to knock off second-seeded Highland with the same combination of staunch defense and offensive fire power that had enabled them to humble Marlboro.

And they certainly had their chance to do so.

The Highland Lady Huskies were stretching prior to the game and watching Sullivan West’s players drain shot after shot in warm ups. Despite the Huskies’ fine 18-3 record this year, coach Jim Delmar admitted that this team was not the same as the one that won last year’s Class B title by beating first Burke and then Marlboro.

The Lady Bulldogs came out looking like strong contenders against the defending champs. Using the post presence of Rachel Houghtaling and an early bucket from Sarah Lander, the Dawgs got out to the early lead, but early foul trouble caused Lander to have to sit out much of the first half. She picked up her second foul with only a little more than four minutes gone in the game.

Meanwhile, Highland recovered from its early lapses on switching and began to do a better job defending screen and rolls. Eryn Marx kept Highland in the mix early on as the two teams battled. The Bulldogs retained a 10-7 lead after the first quarter and ran that up to 14-7 in the early going of the second with post points from Houghtaling and Katrina Graby.

But Highland began to pressure Sullivan West shooters and provide more help on defense. The result: 11 first-half turnovers by the Dawgs to Highland’s six. By night’s end, that total had risen to an uncanny 20. Highland would have 15, but several of those came on intentional shot-clock violations late in the game as they worked to burn the clock.

Highland moved well without the ball, thereby freeing up Marx and Ashley Hanhurst, who both showed their ability to penetrate and shoot over Bulldog defenders who often arrived a second too late to effectively contest their shots.

Hanhurst got six points in the second quarter and Marx had four more to match her first-quarter total.

After the Bulldogs got up 14-7 at 6:26 of the second quarter, they would score only two more points for the rest of the frame, allowing Highland to rip off a 10-0 run to take a 21-16 lead into halftime.

It was clear that although the lead was only five, the tide had turned, especially as Lander picked up her third foul as the quarter was winding down.

Highland committed three fouls in the first minute of the second half, but Sullivan West was on its way to a dreadful five-for-14 from the line. Highland was worse at four-for-16. In his four outings of scouting Highland, Sullivan West coach Ron Bernhardt had noted the Huskies’ poor foul shooting. Part of his strategy was to slow Highland’s running strength by putting them on the line with fouls to give. That strategy never materialized. Hanhurst hit the quarter’s first bucket and Casey Brooks hit the next one as the Dawgs started their second half with a three-and-a-half-minute drought.

Having already outscored the ice-cold Dawgs 14-6 in the second quarter, Highland built its lead with a 15-8 scoring surge in the third quarter, leaving Sullivan West trailing by 12 after three and Highland holding a 36-24 lead.

In the first 20 minutes of the game, the normally productive Dawgs were held to a total of 18 points.

As Bernhardt put it after the game, it was “a collective collapse.”

The offense went south at just the wrong time of the season, reminiscent of last year’s exit against Marlboro when the Dawgs couldn’t find the cylinder until the fourth quarter.

Their comeback last year against the Dukes put them in the lead and in a position to win, but they fell short in the end on Marlboro’s easy access to the stripe.

This time out, there would be no late heroics, except for those rendered by Highland, who continued to play the brand of smart, hustle basketball that got them the crown last year and put them in a position to defend their title against John S. Burke. As it turned out, Highland played as dreadfully in the finals as Sullivan West did in the semis, falling to Burke 50-35 and never answering the bell.

Hanhurst went down with an ankle injury in the early going of the third quarter, but her absence did not spell ruin for her team, who kept to their game plan until she returned.

She led all scorers with 13 points. Marx had 12 for the second-seed Lady Huskies, who improved their mark to 19-3. Christie Morano had nine and Casey Brooks netted four in Highland’s balanced attack. Sullivan West (15-7) was led by Houghtaling. Graby and Lander had only four each.

Delmar was pleased with his team’s performance, noting that although they have shown some skittishness this year in taking the ball to the rim, he urged them to do so to at least draw fouls. The strategy worked well.

Bernhardt summed things up this way. “We were in good shape. We didn’t have Sarah for a while but we didn’t play well. We turned the ball over way too many times and we didn’t front their cutters. We were in a position to put the hammer down early, but we just didn’t get it done.”

Sullivan West will return the majority of its starters for one more quest for the elusive Section Nine title next season.