MANSFIELD, Mass. – Four years ago, Mansfield won only four games. Those freshmen are now seniors and on Monday night, they capped their final season in Mansfield colors by climbing a ladder, scissors in hand, to cut down the nets at the Albertini Gym.
“This is huge,” said senior Caroline Maher, moments before she got the chance to go up the ladder and celebrate with a piece of the net. “My freshman year we had four wins and now we have 18 or 19, I don’t even know, and we’re going to the state tournament. I’m so happy and so proud of us.”
The Hornets used a strong second half to exact a measure of revenge on Attleboro with a 56-43 victory in front a standing room only, raucous crowd to split the season series with the Bombardiers and clinched the Kelley-Rex division title. It is the program’s second Hockomock title and first since 2011.
Maher added, ““I remember watching the 2010-11 team winning it and I thought, oh I want to be up there on the ladder cutting that string.”
Mansfield coach Mike Redding said of his senior class, “They just keep getting better; a lot of camaraderie, young kids stepping in to help and just a lot of fun to be around. I’m really proud of what they did.”
Attleboro came into the game with its sights set on the program’s first Hockomock title and jumped out to an early lead, up 12-8 after the first quarter. Junior Sarah Deyo sparked the Bombardiers with seven of her team-high 15 in the first, including an early three and a couple of layups.
Juliana Newell (12 points) kept Mansfield in the game with four in the first and another six points in the second, most coming off her familiar mid-range jumper. Jen Peel stepped up in the second and scored half of her game-high 18 points in the quarter with drives into the middle of the Attleboro defense.
“She got in the lane the other time,” said Attleboro coach Rick Patch, “but this time she was looking to score. We made the adjustment to just keep her in front of us, but there were times that we lost her.”
A Jordyn Lako three had given Attleboro a 22-15 lead, but Peel scored five straight points to cut the lead to four. After a pair of free throws by Fatima McDonald, Peel got another layup and a pair from the line to bring Mansfield within two. After Sam Pierce (10 points) buried a three, Newell closed out the first half with a runner that kept the Hornets within three at 27-24.
In the third quarter, Meg Hill took over the game. The sophomore center scored all 11 of her points in the third and a big chunk of her game-high 15 rebounds and four blocks.
Redding said, “We kept kidding her the last couple weeks about going into ‘Beast Mode.’ You can be a nice kid off the court but you’ve got to step on and ante up and as a sophomore she did that in the third quarter. She changed the tone of the game.”
Hill started the half with a layup off an inbound pass by Peel (five assists) but Mish Logie followed with a corner three to extend the lead to four. Peel answered that with a transition basket plus the foul.
“For all the good things she does, we’ll live with a couple of turnovers,” said Redding of Peel. She can always seem to find a lane. As tight as things are, she always finds a way through.”
After a Pierce jumper, Hill scored four straight to give Mansfield the lead at 33-32, its first since the opening basket of the game. She continued to dominate the paint on a personal 8-0 run that put Mansfield up by five, a lead that the Hornets would carry into the fourth quarter.
“There were a couple calls, not blaming the ref, it was just reffed in a way that we haven’t seen all year so to make that adjustment – we just couldn’t,” Patch explained. “We had to focus on boxing out harder…it was making it much tougher for our kids.”
Deyo hit a three late in the third quarter and then added another one to start the fourth and bring Attleboro back within two. After a Newell layup and a pair of free throws from Jackie Carchedi, Emma Vlashi (six points) scored on a drive to the hoop and another shot in the paint and it was 45-43.
Coming into the game, Emily Houle needed four points to hit 1,000 for her career, but in the fourth quarter she had been held to only a pair of free throws. At several points in the game, Houle seemed more like a decoy as the offense flowed in different directions, but she finally got free on the baseline with a chance to tie the game.
The jumper was halfway down but spun out. Attleboro did not score another point in the game.
“It’s baffling,” said Patch about the struggle to get Houle the ball. “We’re coming out of timeouts calling certain plays and I don’t know if it’s the environment or whatever, we trained for it, we practiced for it.
Mansfield forced a steal from McDonald and Peel raced the length of the court to score plus the foul, putting the Hornets up by six. On the next trip, Carchedi took a deep three that was off line, but the senior was the first to react and rebounded her own miss to score a dagger basket.
“I don’t know who our MVP is but I think she may have my vote just because she does so much at both ends of the floor,” said Redding of Carchedi. “She really does everything for us. She doesn’t score a lot of points for us but that offensive rebound and score was huge.”
The Hornets knocked down free throws in the closing minutes to clinch the victory and with it the title. Maher got her wish and was able to stand atop the ladder and hold her piece of the net.
“We’ve played together for so long, longer than I can remember,” she said of the senior class. “The fourth grade ‘A’ team, but for a few kids that went to Feehan this is the team.”
Redding added, “Just a great game with a lot of players stepping up…There’s a 50-50 chance that we could play in the quarterfinal, so get ready for the rubber match.”
Mansfield will await the tournament pairings that will come out this weekend, while Attleboro will close out its regular season (and Emily Houle will continue her quest for 1,000) on Wednesday at Durfee.
Josh Perry can be contacted at JoshPerry@hockomocksports.com and followed on Twitter at @Josh_Perry10.
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