CHELTENHAM — The fourth quarter has been a sticking point for Germantown Academy girls basketball.
In the Patriots’ three losses this season, the final frame presented the bulk of their frustration. Pushed into another close game against another quality opponent Sunday against Archbishop Carroll in the Hoops for Hope Classic at Arcadia University, it came down to the fourth again.
This time, GA was able to close out, picking up a 40-32 win over last year’s PIAA 6A champions.
“We worked on it every single day at practice,” GA senior Isabella Casey said. “Facing that pressure is something we’ve struggled with a little bit this season, so we showed up every day and worked on it this week.”
It might seem odd to say GA (13-3, 3-0 Inter-Ac) closed strong in a fourth quarter where the team didn’t convert a field goal, but unlike last week’s loss to Audenried or earlier setbacks to Cardinal O’Hara and Friends’ Central, it ended with a win. Much of it had to do with a defensive effort that held Carroll (7-5, 2-0 PCL) to just nine second-half points.
Last Sunday, GA had chances late against Audenried but a mixture of missed shots, turnovers and failed opportunities to get stops cost the Patriots. Against Carroll, also the Patriots, it was a chance to make up for it.
“I think we just got so much tougher,” GA guard Jess Kolecki said. “We knew we had to be super tough to beat Carroll today. After Audenried, we wanted it so much more.”
Kolecki had a strong game on Sunday, the junior guard netting a game-high 16 points, adding six rebounds and four assists. Her energy on defense, which featured several deflections on top of two steals, helped set the tone on that end.
The fourth quarter brought it home but the third quarter changed the flow of the game. Archbishop Carroll was the tougher team in the first half, the PCL side hitting the offensive glass hard and extending possessions.
Coming out of the halftime break, GA matched that and turned in an 11-0 run that flipped a 23-21 deficit to a 32-23 lead.
“A lot of the first half, we gave up so many offensive rebounds to them,” Casey said. “We were rebounding well, which allowed us to run more offense. We had limited chances in the first half to score and needed to change that.”
Carroll and GA have a lot of similarities, both teams are heavy on guards and wings and play physical. Knowing they’d be up against an aggressive defensive team, GA tried to play that as an advantage.
“We backdoor cut really well and ran a lot of give-and-go in the middle to try and use their high defensive pressure against them,” Kolecki said.
On the other end of the floor, Germantown Academy had to change some things up. GA played predominantly zone in the second half, something else Kolecki said the team worked on this week.
“On defense, they just run incredible sets so we had to get out of our man-to-man because they run such awesome sets for their players,” Casey said. “When we went to the zone, it kind of took them out of their sets.”
GA picked up its first big win in the Inter-Ac earlier this month against Notre Dame while Thursday brings the first of the two league meetings with archrival Penn Charter. None of the players on the GA roster have won an Inter-Ac title and while they’re still a long way from that, Sunday was also a first for all of them.
“None of the girls on our team had ever beaten Carroll,” Casey said. “This was a huge win for us, they’re a team we wanted to beat because of how good they’ve been.”
Germantown Academy 40, Archbishop Carroll 32
Germantown Academy 13 8 11 8 – 40
Archbishop Carroll 17 6 3 6 – 32
Germantown Academy: Jess Kolecki 5 6-6 16, Isabella Casey 4 6-7 14, Gabby Bowes 2 0-0 6, Jess Aponik 1 0-2 0, Jenna Aponik 0 2-2 2. Totals: 12 14-17 40.
Archbishop Carroll: Alexis Eberz 7 0-0 17, Brooke Wilson 4 1-3 9, Olivia Nardi 1 0-0 3, Abbie McFillin 1 1-2 3. Totals: 13 1-7 32.
