HOLDEN—Inyears gone by, the Golden Eagles of Springfield Central High have not been kind to your Wachusett Regional High girls’ basketball team.
A season ago, the Golden Eagles derailed the Mountaineers’ bid for a Division 1 state title by defeating the green and white, 4536, on their way to a state championship. In the 2018 semifinals, Wachusett experienced a similar fate.
That streak, though impressive, came to a close at home on March 10 as 4-seed Wachusett executed strongly in all phases of the game, particularly on defense, holding 12-seed Springfield (19-3) to 39 points in recording the quarterfinal victory. The Mountaineers put up 51 points of their own, with crucial baskets by juniors Mary Gibbons, Cate King and Liz Cain.
Wachusett (212) now advances to a semifinal matchup with top-seed Andover High at a date, location and time to be announced as of this writing.
“Tonight we played great defensively. I don’t really think they expected the zone that we’ve been working on for about a month,” said head coach Jim Oxford of his team’s performance. “We hadn’t revealed it because we really haven’t needed to, but I think tonight we needed it. It didn’t give their shooters a chance to get going. I don’t think we could put together a better game plan than we did for this team.”
“This was the team that knocked us out last year, so we wanted to move on and make it to the final four,” said senior co-captain Emmy Allyn. “We knew that this game was going to come down to defense. They have some big girls (6foot-4 Julie Bahati and 6-foot-2 Angela Hector), so we knew it was going to be super tough. We knew we needed to come in and have a strong defensive game.”
“We were so excited in the locker room and were really motivated to come out and play our best. This was such a big game for us,” said Cain, who led all scorers with 18 points. “I love the fans and I love them cheering. We were really hyped up and excited.
“We spent a lot of time working on what we were going to do on defense. They’re big and they have amazing post players. We knew that it was going to be a hard matchup, but we all worked together and made it happen.”
“We came up with a defensive plan, and we executed it well,” said King. “We needed to keep them out of the deep box as much as possible. That was our game plan coming in.”
The teams were deadlocked at 13 apiece late in the first half but broke open for a 21-17 halftime advantage for Wachusett. King swished a 3-pointer followed by a nifty feed from her to Cain, who converted for the easy layup heading into the break.
Gibbons’ 3-point conversion midway through the third quarter ignited the team’s scoring punch with key buckets from Cain, King and freshman varsity player Jaelynn Scott that led to a double digit lead of 44-34 down the stretch. Scott saw time off the bench and made the most of her minutes, putting up a dozen points.
“She was tremendous,” Oxford said of his young talent. “She was able to deflect shots and has the jumping ability to get rebounds and score. She had a tremendous game for us.”
“It’s been one matchup at a time so far and so it will be,” according to Oxford. “No one wants to stop. We talked about when we got to the postseason, you’ve got five games and that’s it. This team is very determined to go all the way this year.”
