Despite 20 first-half turnovers and the Warriors' best player — senior forward Sofia Rosa — sitting on the bench after fouling out, Lincoln-Sudbury found itself in a tie game with 2:13 left in regulation. From there, however, the Warriors turned the ball over on four straight possessions.
SUDBURY — The plan of action was pretty simple for the Lincoln-Sudbury girls basketball team heading into its Dual County League showdown with Westford Academy on Monday night.
“If we can stay out of foul trouble and keep the turnovers down,” L-S coach Steve Connelly said before the game, “we should be okay.”
Despite 20 first-half turnovers and the Warriors’ best player — senior forward Sofia Rosa — sitting on the bench after fouling out, L-S found itself in a tie game with 2:13 left in regulation.
From there, however, the Warriors turned the ball over on four straight possessions while Westford sank a 3-pointer and senior captain Emily Bramanti made all six of her free throws, and L-S was handed a 51-44 loss at George L. Horton Memorial Gymnasium.
With the defeat, L-S (5-6, 0-4 DCL Large) failed to kick off the second half of its regular season on the right foot as the Warriors lost for the sixth time since Jan. 5.
“Recently, we’ve been in a slump,” said the 6-foot-1 Rosa, who is headed for Tufts University next fall. “We really wanted to bounce back from that. … We have to work on our turnovers and our passing and really just a lot of the little stuff.”
The little and big things started to twirl L-S’s way in the third and fourth quarters. The Warriors trimmed a 12-point halftime deficit down to a 37-33 disadvantage heading into the fourth quarter when senior Hannah Brodsky (8 points) made a basket from the right side of the key with 23.3 seconds left in the third.
Westford and L-S then traded baskets by the Grey Ghosts and pairs of free throws by the Warriors before a Rosa (18 points) bucket with 4:45 left made it 41-39 in favor of Westford.
A layup attempt that clanked off the rim from L-S junior Karly van Leer (4 points) nearly tied the game with a little less than four minutes left before Rosa picked up her fifth and final foul. Then, a free throw from Westford’s Brooke Pillsbury made it 42-39 with 2:57 left in the contest.
And that’s when L-S finally clawed all the way back.
With the clock ticking under 2:30, Brodsky heaved an overhead pass from the same spot where she hit her 2-pointer in the third quarter to an open Kerstin Kelly. The L-S sophomore guard proceeded to nail a corner 3-pointer with 2:13 left to tie the game at 42 apiece.
“That was really all heart,” Rosa said of coming back from the 27-15 deficit at halftime. “It was just the adrenaline going and we got the run, and tried to keep it up.”
Yet as soon as the Warriors scratched back into the game, they quickly watched it slip away.
The two teams traded turnovers before Pillsbury drained a big 3-pointer with 1:32 remaining. L-S then turned the ball over, again, and fouled Bramanti. The Stonehill College-bound guard made both of her free throws before yet another Warriors giveaway.
Bramanti (16 points) hit a pair of freebies to make it 49-42, and made two more from the charity stripe after one final L-S turnover.
“We were there; we had an opportunity, tied the game, and had them. We at least made 12 points up against a really good team,” Connelly said after the game. “So hopefully they learn from that and they figure out that if we can fix two or three things, not the least of which is take better care of the ball, then we should be fine.”
After a Westford foul, Kelly made both of her free throws with 12.6 left, but it was too little too late for the Warriors in the seven-point loss.
“I think we just have a lot of new players on our team and we lost a really big senior class [from last year],” Rosa said. “So it will come with experience and getting people on the floor, and learning from our mistakes.”
Tommy Cassell can be reached at 508-626-4405 or tcassell@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @tommycassell44.