March
19, 2005
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| Heather Zurich scored 12 points in the final game of her brilliant career at Pascack Valley. | |
DOVER TWP. -- The clock finally ran out on the Pascack Valley girls basketball team, putting an end to one of the most improbable and at the same time impressive runs in the basketball-rich 32-year history of the Indians. Succumbing to a superior inside game and a night where the shots just didn't fall, Valley's season came to a close at the hands of Woodrow Wilson, a 49-32 winner in the semifinals of the Tournament of Champions on Friday night at the Ritacco Center.
The 17-point
margin of victory hardly tells the story of the game Indians, who fought off
all kinds of adversity to tie the game at 29 on a Heather Zurich basket with
2:44 left in the third period. They even had a chance to take the lead with
the ball, but after a miss and a Wilson bucket, the Lions began a 20-3 game-closing
run over the final 10 minutes against a tiring Valley team that also lost
Hilary Scacchetti to fouls with 6:19 to go trailing by seven.
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| Deree Fooks and the rest of Woodrow Wilson's front line dominated the glass on both ends of the floor. |
"They're so athletic," Pascack Valley head coach Jeff Jasper said. "I thought we did some great things, but once it became a problem for Hilary in foul trouble, it was going to be lights out. Their difference was up on the glass. We held our own for a long time, but they wore us down in there."
The Indians went 0 for 10 from the floor in the final period, as they were outscored 15-1.
"I can't be more pleased with what we've accomplished," Jasper continued. "As far as this group has gone and what they did, I love the way they play. Their unselfishness, their tenacity. It was never an issue about winning. We're on bonus time, we've been playing with house money for the past two weeks.
"Did we want to win tonight? Oh yeah. Will I ever have an opportunity to ever get back to the Meadowlands and play in a Tournament of Champions final, I don't know. You have to be good and you have to be lucky.
"Did
I want that for Heather and Erin (Thames) and Justine (Miras, the three seniors),
yeah, much more than I wanted it for me. Just for them to play on the biggest
stage they could play on. Each game we won and moved forward, it put them
on another stage to perform and for people to appreciate the really solid
basketball that they play."
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| Erin Thames grabbed a team high eight rebounds in her final game at PV. |
The two biggest factors were Wilson's ability to create second chances on the offensive glass and a rough shooting night. The Lions (26-3) scored 26 of their points in the paint and had 18 offensive rebounds, and Pascack Valley (29-2) hit just 13 of 46 field goal tries.
"They have strong players and they played a great game," Zurich said of the Lions. "They played a heckuva game on defense."
"They were a different (kind of) team than we had played before," Thames recounted. "They were quick and got into the passing lanes really well. They didn't let us get it inside to Hilary, and we rushed our shots a bit. We weren't as patient as we have been."
Unlike
its previous two games at the Ritacco Center, Valley struggled to knock down
shots all game. The Indians didn't score their first point until 4:57 had
elapsed in the first quarter, but Wilson hit only 2 of 17 shots itself, so
the game was knotted at six.
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| Wilson's Ashley Baker had three steals and turned them all into fastbreak baskets. |
The second quarter saw more of the same, though PV did grab a lead at 16-15 with 49 seconds to go on a Zurich baseline jumper. Tanazia Harden then scored off a putback to regain the lead for the Lions, and after a turnover dished to Ashley Baker for a jumper with a toe on the three-point line at the buzzer to give WW a 19-16 intermission edge.
"The halftime talk was you have to block out and you have to be patient on offense," Zurich recalled, "but it's tough when they were right up in our face and in the passing lanes and denying the ball."
The Lions kept threatening to surge ahead, but the Indians answered, and when Sara Ely dropped in a three from the top of the key and Zurich scored to tie it at 29, Woodrow Wilson called a timeout to regroup.
"We knew they were going to come out in something new," Thames said of the Lions. "We didn't adjust well to what they came out in. They switched up their defense a lot, which messed up our offense and they forced us into quick shots or bad shots."
Jasper
used only six players until Scacchetti fouled out with 10 points and 12 rebounds.
Thames (8 rebounds) and Zurich (7 rebounds) could not offset the work of Wilson's
Deree Fooks (13 rebounds), Harden (8 boards off the bench) and Letitia Curry
(6 boards).
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| Hilary Scacchetti (left) went from JV player last year to the starting center on a state championship team this season. |
Wilson shot just 17 of 54, but the second and third shots were the ones that doomed the Indians. DeVaughn Hailey was the game's high scorer with 17 points and Baker had 10, as the two guards were able to penetrate and score. Baker also had three steals, scoring baskets off of all three.
Zurich finished with 12 points in her final game, shooting just 5 of 20, but her legacy at PV includes a Group 2 state championship.
"We definitely earned that, and (the banner) is going to be hanging in our gym and we're going to be able to look back and say, hey, we were a part of that team."
They were a team that accomplished much more than anyone would have expected. Zurich was the only returning starter, and around her were a junior center who was a JV player the previous year, a senior point guard who got hurt (Miras) and gave way to a freshman (Ely), a junior guard who missed the majority of last year with injury (Jessica Lynch), another freshman guard (Jessica Lynch) and a forward (Thames) whose biggest moments last year were a couple of shots in the Bergen County final against IHA.
"The sadness I have now is the same sadness I would have had two weeks ago or a month ago if the season had ended then," Jasper added. "We're attached. Teams are about discipline, loyalty and love, and that's what this team has. It's like (former NC State head coach) Jim Valvano says, you got to laugh, you got to cry and you got to love, and you have to do that every day, and that's what we did. They all played great this entire tournament. I have no regrets and there is not one thing I would change."
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