WALES — Carrabec has a name for the shot Macy Welch hit at the buzzer to beat Oak Hill Wednesday night.
“We have ‘yes’ shots,” the Cobras’ senior forward said. “They’re shots that you can just feel it as it leaves your hand, you get that feeling of ‘Yes, it’s going in.’ I felt it.”
With the game tied and a little over two seconds left, Welch took an inbounds pass from Jessica Vaillancourt behind the 3-point arc in the right corner, turned and fired in the game-winner at the buzzer to give the Cobras a 42-39 win over the Raiders.
“I’d love to take credit for that (play), but no,” said Carrabec coach Skip Rugh, whose team had the ball because it owned the alternating possession arrow after its first bid for a game-winner ended up in a jump ball. “(Welch) came off the screen like she was supposed to, she just came out way wider because it was open.”
“This is the first year I’ve actually been an outside shooter,” Welch said. “Before now, that would have been an air ball.”
Oak Hill (3-3), which never led after the first quarter, had to rally from a seven-point deficit early in the fourth quarter to force the dramatic conclusion. Hayley Marshall scored all of her team-high 10 points to lead the charge, capped by a steal and runner that knotted it at 39-39 with a little over a minute left.
“We just never really got into a flow until late in the game,” Oak Hill coach Tom Morong said. “We got in one and made a game of it with our pressure. They were kind of relentless and Hayley Marshall was unbelievable defensively.”
Carrabec (4-1) kept the Raiders from finding a flow because it controlled the paint for most of the contest, with 6-foot-1 junior center Emma Pluntke (nine points, 13 rebounds) crashing the offensive boards and clogging the lane defensively.
“It’s awful hard to displace a 6-foot-1 post player,” Morong said. “Even if you box her out, we weren’t moving her boxing her out.”
Pluntke and a pair of 3-pointers by Welch (10 points) sparked a 10-2 run that put the Cobras up 24-14 late in the first half.
The Raiders cut the deficit to six at halftime from the free throw line. They stayed in that range until Danielle Samson banked in a 3-pointer late in the third period to make it 29-28. But the Cobras slowly built the lead back up, with Jerzee Rugh’s jumper inflating it to seven early in the fourth. Pluntke’s putback made it 38-31 midway through the period.
Oak Hill turned up the heat defensively and forced 10 turnovers in the period to chip away.
“I think it was their pressure that got to us a little bit. We freaked out a little bit,” Welch said.
Kelsey Collins’ jumper and Grace Sabine’s drive made it a two-point game. Vaillancourt hit one of two free throws for Carrabec’s only point in the final five minutes before Welch’s game-winner. Marshall’s aggressiveness at both ends got her to the free throw line, where she made two of four attempts then converted her fifth steal into the game-tying hoop.
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