UNCASVILLE – The warm-up shirts that the Holy Cross girls basketball team wore prior to Saturday’s Class L state championship game at Mohegan Sun Arena spoke to what the Crusaders’ program has been about for the past 30 years.
“The tradition continues …” was proudly displayed on the back of the shirts. Coach Frank Lombardo explained after the No. 1-seeded Crusaders lost to No. 2 Simsbury, 55-40, that the tradition isn’t about winning all the time, but rather how the program represents itself.
The Crusaders (24-3) fell behind by 15 points, 19-4, in the first 13 minutes of the championship game to Simsbury, but they never gave up.
The Trojans won their school’s first state title in girls basketball. Holy Cross was in its seventh state final; it has won twice.
“I am very proud of our girls,” Lombardo said. “Every single day in practice, every single pregame and postgame, we talk about attitude. I have been doing this for 30 years, and we have a lot of wins and losses, and those don’t mean anything to me.
“What means the most to me is how they represent their school, the name on their jersey and their parents. I told them after the game I was very proud of the way they played. We worked hard, hustled and gave everything we had. The ball just didn’t go in the basket enough for us.”
The only player who scored in double figures for Holy Cross was junior guard Shania Howard, who finished with 17 points, five rebounds and five steals. She drew 10 fouls in the game with her relentless play, but in the end she shot only 9-of-16 from the free throw line and 4-of-11 from the field.
“Shania is a great player,” Lombardo said. “The thing I love about her is she works just as hard on the defensive end as she does on the offensive end. She gave us everything she had today. She was one of our bright stars rebounding and getting steals, putting the ball into the basket and getting to the free throw line.
“It was just not her night from the free throw line, but in the other parts of the game she was a superstar.”
The Most Outstanding Player of the game was Simsbury forward Olivia Jarvis, who finished with 19 points and eight rebounds for the Trojans (22-4). She shot 7-of-11 from the foul line. Their other forward, Amanda Gallaher, finished with 21 points and shot 10-of-13 from the line.
In all, Simsbury finished 21-of-30 from the charity stripe while the Crusaders were 12-of-26.
Fouls impacted the game in another way as the Crusaders’ other star player, sophomore forward Corinne Lomax (six points), played with foul trouble for most of the game before fouling out with 3:20 to play.
“I don’t think they were nervous,” Lombardo said. “I definitely think those missed free throws in the first quarter and then the foul trouble we had just set us back a little. When Corinne Lomax gets one foul on the first play of the game, it affects us. She is our post player. She is our most effective inside presence, both offensively and defensively.
“So she picks up that foul and she is tentative, and I am tentative with her. That led to a bad first quarter,” Lombardo said. “After that, we started playing Holy Cross basketball, and it was a competitive final three quarters.”
The Crusaders fell behind, 15-2, in the opening six minutes of the game and trailed, 16-4, entering the second quarter. They didn’t make their second field goal until the three-minute mark of the second quarter.
“We started a little slow,” Howard said. “It could have been nerves or could have been the arena, but we still played hard and kept our heads in the game, no matter what. I’m really proud of everything we accomplished.”
They got as close as 31-28 with 1:45 to play in the third, but still struggled to get inside the tough Simsbury defense.
“If you told me back in December we would finish 24-3, I would take that in a heartbeat, especially with Shania being only a junior as one of our best players and Corinne only being a sophomore. Everyone played incredibly well for us to have a tremendous year, and I am so proud of them,” Lombardo said. “The hard thing is when you are at Holy Cross, people expect championships or it is a disappointing year. We just didn’t play our best tonight, but those girls shouldn’t hang their heads. We had a great year, and they gave great effort.”
