POLAND — It’s not the typical recipe for success in basketball, but Gray-New Gloucester defied the odds by making just one field goal in the second half and still came out victorious against rival Poland in a Class B South girls’ basketball game on Tuesday. The Patriots combined stout defense and solid free-throw shooting to win, 39-30.
It was apparent early that Tuesday night’s edition of the rivalry could be a low-scoring affair. Each team made a basket in the first minute, but then both went cold for the next three. The game was tied 4-4 after four minutes, and the Knights (2-2) held a slim 9-7 lead after one quarter.
The Patriots (4-0) owned the second quarter in what turned out to be the difference in the game. They opened the quarter on a 14-1 run, getting eight points from freshman Brianna Jordan in the period to take a 23-12 lead into halftime.
“Bri was wonderful for us tonight,” Gray-NG coach Mike Andreasen said. “She was playing like a junior or a senior, the way she did things for us. She, I thought, got us going in the first half.”
Jordan had nine of her game-high 14 points in the first half, and junior Skye Conley all 10 of her points, as those two combined to outscore the Knights.
“We didn’t play the kind of game we wanted to play,” Poland coach Michael Susi said. “We got into their game. They want to play a very slow, controlled pace. We need to keep the tempo up.”
Gray-NG had a modest six made field goals in the first half. That total looked like a lot, however, compared to the Patriots’ haul after halftime. There wasn’t a made basket in the third quarter, or for the first seven-plus minutes of the fourth. It wasn’t until Ashley Jordan (10 points) got behind the Poland defense for an easy layup with 30 seconds left that the Patriots scored from the field. That basket also proved to be the dagger.
“That’s just gross,” Andreasen said of the single basket. “The second half we really looked very tentative, like we didn’t want to attack the basket, we didn’t want to score. We wanted to just kind of relax and win the game. It almost came back and bit us.”
What the Patriots hung their hat on was their defense, which Andreasen said “drives everything for us.”
That defense held Poland to three combined field goals between the second and third quarters. The last of the three was by Natalie Theriault with two seconds left in the third.
“She’s our motor,” Susi said of Theriault (team-high nine points). “If she is going, the rest of us are going. She sets the tempo.”
That basket, which evened the third-quarter scoring 4-4, set the tone for the Knights in the final period. They drew to within 33-30 on Theriault’s three-point play with 1:40 left, but the Patriots made free throws and Ashley Jordan made a basket to seal the victory.
Gray-NG made 24 of 30 foul shots in the game. Poland had nine attempts total from the line, making five.
“They had to foul us, and we made our foul shots,” Andreasen said.
“We did that to ourselves,” said Susi, who also added: “You got to be proud of our heart and our effort to make a comeback at the end. We could have rolled over.”
wkramlich@sunjournal.com.
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