KILLINGLY – Coming out of the first quarter, the Killingly Redgals had a right to be concerned.
Killingly had made just one of its 11 shots from the floor and trailed the Plainfield Panthers by eight points.
“We had good shots, they just weren’t falling,” junior guard Kylee Mazzarella said.
But the Redgals mantra is to just keep shooting, and sooner or later the shots will fall.
That happened in the second quarter.
By halftime the Redgals were up by five, and that strong second quarter effort carried them to a 42-33 win over the Panthers Saturday.
“As far as I’m concerned, that was the best quarter of basketball we played,” Killingly coach Gina Derosier said. “Offensively for sure, because we’re not a strong offensive team.”
The Redgals (5-8) made up for those early misses, and 10-2 deficit, by hitting six of 11 from the floor in the second quarter, despite Plainfield’s attempts to slow the game down and force Killingly out of its zone.
“They were playing with the ball and it made us hungry,” Mazzarella said. “We wanted to put the ball in the basket and win. It was frustrating and pumped us up.”
The guard, who lit up Plainfield (8-4) for 19 points on Jan. 6, scored eight points in that crucial second quarter.
One of those was the front end of a one-and-one opportunity with Mazzarella missing the second.
But Plainfield coach Jason Greene considered that miss to be the key to the game.
“We didn’t box out, turned the ball over after the free throw and that was it,” Greene said. “We decided to stop playing and became mentally unfocused for the rest of the game.”
The Panthers did get as close as two points to begin the third quarter when freshman Olivia Bessette (11 points, 7 rebounds) hit one of her three 3-pointers.
“She was a lone bright spot (Saturday), especially for the future of the program. She’s getting more comfortable in a starting role,” Greene said.
Mazzarella answered the Bessette 3-pointer and Killingly came up with a pair of traditional three-point plays to counter Bessette’s second 3-pointer midway through the third quarter. The Redgals led 29-18 at the end of three and Plainfield never got closer than five the remainder of the way.
Another big key for the Redgals: they held Plainfield center Madison Kelley to just two field goals and six points.
“Our goal was to stop her inside,” Derosier said. “Our girls, even the guards when they came down to double, did a phenomenal job against her.”
The win was big for Killingly as it tries to navigate through a tough Eastern Connecticut Conference Division II schedule and make the postseason.
“If there is a game that we can win, we have to win it. There are no ‘gimmes’ on our schedule,” Derosier said. “It says a lot about the ECC, it’s a strong conference.”
