The Whitman Wildcats girls basketball team lost a 45-37 defensive struggle to the Deer Park Lady Falcons in the second round of the Suffolk County Class AA Girls Basketball playoffs.
The game was a defensive struggle throughout, as expected, as both teams gave up an average of under 40 points per game (Whitman 34.1, Deer Park 39.3) during the regular season. In Deer Park's case, they hadn't allowed a team to score over 40 points during the entire 2011 calendar year.
The game was tied at 29 the end of the third quarter, but Whitman struggled to settle in during the fourth quarter, allowing Deer Park to outscore them 9-0 over the first four minutes of the eight-minute quarter while committing turnovers on nearly every possession. They found a little bit of a rhythm in the final four minutes, but were unable to make significant progress on Deer Park's lead.
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"I didn’t think we shot especially well," said Whitman head coach Dan Trebour.
"We got to the foul line a little bit, we did get fouled, but we couldn’t capitalize enough on the foul shots. And just too many avoidable turnovers that we forced upon ourselves. But it’s a credit to Deer Park. I think they were responsible for creating the defense to make the mistakes."
We played pretty good defense ourselves," he added. "We did what we had to do defensively. Wejust didn’t capitalize on offense."
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The loss was Whitman's second to Deer Park on the season and ended Whitman's year with an overall record of 16-4.
Heroes: Whitman head coach Dan Trebour noted that his team would have to shut down Deer Park's two top guards if they wanted to move on. They were unable to get the job done against Deer Park's junior guard Andrea Desvinges. Desvinges led all scorers with 19 points and added five rebounds, five steals, and four assists.
"She’s our go-to girl, she’s our best player," said coach Gennaro. "She led our team in rebounding this year. She led our team in scoring. She led our team in steals. She takes charges. She plays every aspect of the game. And she has the heart of a champion."
"I thought at times she rushed it a little bit today, tried to do a little too much," he added. "But I think that’s just her trying to carry the team a little bit. We talked to her about it in one of the timeouts, that she needed to slow down and trust her teammates a little bit more, and she agreed."
The Lady Falcons have a large group of upperclassmen contributing to their cause, and many of them were at the top of the statsheet. Senior Felicia LaSorsa had 12 points and seven rebounds, junior Kelsey Dillon led the Lady Falcons with eight rebounds, senior forward Nicole Alvarez picked up six rebounds, and senior guard Shayna Robinson contributed six points.
Whitman's effort was led by a solid all-around performance from sophomore forward Essence Casey. Casey tied for the team lead with 12 points, led all players with 13 rebounds, and added 3 steals.
Senior forward Alexandra Leftridge tied Casey for the team lead with 12 points. But she was limited to just 5 for 15 shooting from the floor. Deer Park did a good job of limiting Leftridge even though it wasn't really their gameplan.
"[Leftridge is] a great player," said coach Gennaro. "She's going to get her points. We rotated girls on her. We put Dillon on Leftridge, we put Alvarez on Leftridge. But our main focus was to shut down [Kelly] Bilodeau and [Rachel] Perea. They’re really dynamite outside shooters."
That strategy worked. Perea was held scoreless after two first-quarter threes, while Bilodeau was limited to five points (although foul trouble played a part in that as well).
Turning Point: Deer Park jumped out to an 8-0 lead to start the second half, but Whitman countered with an 8-0 run of their own to close out the third quarter. They were unable to find a sustained response after Deer Park went on a 9-0 run to start the fourth quarter, however. They didn't miss too many shots, but they turned the ball over on almost every possession.
Coach Trebour admitted that a lot of the turnovers were avoidable, but also conceded that having a young team on the floor could have contributed to some of the poor play.
"You have a lot of sophomores, and for some of them, that’s the biggest moment they’ve been in," he said. "It could very well be. I’d like to see the tape and figure that out. But there were definitely a lot of avoidable turnovers."
Coach Gennaro pointed to the play of senior guard Jasmine Gonzalez, a fourth-quarter specialist due to an ACL injury, as a catalyst for his team's fourth-quarter success.
"We kinda limit her minutes and we go to her a lot in the fourth quarter," he said, "for her experience and her free-throw shooting, just to get that extra guard on the floor, to handle their press in the last three minutes. As you can see, she knocked down her free throws in the last couple of minutes. Just having that leadership and that experience on the floor made a huge difference for us."
Quotable: Whitman had a lot of success when the applied full-court pressure during their first-round victory over Bellport. Their success with it today was spotty, although they had tremendous success when they applied it at the beginning of the second quarter. However, Coach Trebour was wary of pressing Deer Park's backcourt over the entire game for several reasons.
"I don’t know if those two guards are the two you want to press all game long," he said. "And there was some foul trouble. Kelly Bilodeau was in foul trouble. I thought that defensively, we were able to get stops in our half-court man. The pressing, it does help create offense, and if we were able to press longer and more successfully it could’ve helped our offense. I thought we were getting the stops in the half-court, it just wasn’t creating our offense."
Key Stat: Despite Whitman having only a one-point lead after the first two quarters and a tie score after three quarters, the game only had three lead changes and four tie scores. There were no lead changes or ties in the fourth quarter.
Upcoming: Deer Park will face Copaigue, who shocked the previously undefeated Northport Lady Tigers yesterday, in the Suffolk County Class AA Semifinals at SUNY Farmingdale on Monday at 7:30.
Whitman's season is over, and the careers of Leftridge and fellow seniors Kim Guterman and Erica Scott are over as well. While coach Trebour admitted that he would've liked to get another shot at Northport in the semi-finals (not realizing that they were going to knocked out soon themselves), he said he was satisfied with a season where the only four losses came at the hands of League winners.
"I think it was a good experience for a lot of the sophomores that played a lot," he said. "We have 9 sophomores on the team. It’s really a good experience for them. We’re going to miss [Alexandra] next year, and Erica, and Kim, but hopefully the minutes they got this year for next season will kind of lead us right into another successful year."
Box Score 1 2 3 4 F
Whitman 11 10 7 8 37
Deer Park 10 10 8 16 45
Whitman:
Leftridge 7-5-12
Casey 5-7-12
Perea 6-0-6
Bilodeau 4-1-5
Guterman 0-2-2
Deer Park:
Desvignes 7-12-19
LaSorsa 6-6-12
Robinson 2-4-6
Dillon 4-0-4
Alvarez 2-0-2
Gonzalez 0-2-2
Rebounds: Whitman 34 (Casey 13, Vallar 7, Bilodeau 5, Scott 4, Perea 3, Leftridge 2), Deer Park 29 (Dillon 8, LaSorsa 7, Alvarez 6, Desvinges 5, Gomez 2, Gonzalez 1)
Assists: Deer Park 6 (Desvinges 4, Robinson 1, LaSorza 1), Whitman 2 (Leftridge 1, Casey 1)
Steals: Deer Park 11 (Desvinges 5, LaSorza 2, Dillon 2, Robinson 2), Whitman 9 (Casey 3, Leftridge 3, Perea 2, Vallar 1)
