Up against a talented and well-coached Oliver Ames team, the Milford girls basketball squad knew it couldn't afford to dig itself an early hole.
MILFORD — Up against a talented and well-coached Oliver Ames team, the Milford girls basketball squad knew it couldn't afford to dig itself an early hole.
Winners of three straight and eight of their last nine, the Scarlet Hawks welcomed the Tigers to town Tuesday night for a Hockomock League crossover showdown between two teams that entered with a combined record of 15-6. And the one thing Milford couldn't have happen was to let Oliver Ames get out to a big lead, well aware that it's tough to play from behind when facing a tough team like the Tigers.
But while the Scarlet Hawks played just as well, if not better, than Oliver Ames in the second half, it was a slow start that doomed Milford. The Tigers — behind 20 points and 15 rebounds from star senior Kayla Raymond — held the Scarlet Hawks to just five first-quarter points and built a 19-point halftime lead on their way to a 60-45 victory.
“The 15-point deficit at the end doesn't tell the story of the game because it was closer than that,” Milford coach TJ Dolliver said after his team fell to 8-4. “They got some buckets there late in the fourth, but yeah, that first half, if we can minimize the 19-point deficit to 12 or 13 then it's a completely different game at the end. The game was lost in the first half, for sure. Well, maybe not lost, but our first half didn't help us in the second half.
“That's a very well-coached team. They work very hard, and you've got to tip your cap to them.”
Oliver Ames asserted itself in the opening eight minutes, when the Tigers jumped all over the Scarlet Hawks.
With the score tied 2-2 just 18 seconds into the game, Oliver Ames proceeded to go on a 13-0 run over the next 5:27 to take a 15-2 lead. Raymond scored the first seven of those on a 3-pointer, an 18-footer, and a layup in transition, with Alex Sheldon (16 points) adding a pair of layups during the run.
When the first-quarter buzzer finally sounded, the Tigers held a 20-5 lead, with the key for Oliver Ames being its ability to get out in transition and get easy hoops. Half of the Tigers’ first-quarter points came on layups by beating Milford down the floor.
“We definitely lost this game in the first quarter,” Scarlet Hawks senior captain Kate Irwin, who netted 16 points and now sits 32 away from 1,000 for her career, said. “We played with them or better than them the rest of the game. We just didn't really catch up on their transition a lot. We knew going into the game that they were going to try and get out in transition. That's how they get a lot of their points, but we didn't really catch on to it too well in the first quarter.
“We were all crashing the offensive glass, which is normally fine, but against a team like this, we needed to keep one or two players back to not let them get transition baskets.”
Thanks to a second quarter in which Oliver Ames outrebounded Milford 15-8, the Tigers used a 15-11 frame to take a 35-16 lead into the half, with Raymond notching 12 points and eight rebounds over the first two quarters.
“She can do anything,” Irwin said of what makes Raymond so tough to play against. “Beginning of the game, she was shooting from the outside, but she can also score in the paint, rebound, and she's good in transition. She's a really good player.”
The first half of the third quarter was relatively even, but Oliver Ames still held a 43-22 lead with 3:24 on the clock. That's when the Scarlet Hawks really began to step up their play, as they closed the third with a 10-0 run — capped by senior captain Emily Piergustavo's triple with 1:22 left — to head into the fourth down 43-32.
In the fourth, a triple by senior captain Juliana Tracy made it 47-37 before senior Jess Tomaso (14 points) made one of two at the free throw line to get it to single digits with 5:41 left to play. Milford found itself down by nine twice more — 51-42 and 53-44 — but that's as close as the Scarlet Hawks were able to get the rest of the way.
“In the second half, we made the adjustment to have two girls get back on defense and the other three go for the offensive rebound,” Dolliver said. “We did a better job of it, for sure, and that's a huge reason why we started to come back a bit in the second half.”