Girls Basketball: Mary Sareen’s bomb lights fuse for Radnor in Central playoff win over GV
CONCORD — The first half of the Radnor-Garnet Valley Central League playoff quarterfinal was fairly mundane, a standard back-and-forth affair. Both teams performed very well on the defensive end, but the offensive side left a lot to be desired.
Until Mary Sareen decided she’d had enough.
Radnor’s senior guard swished a 3-pointer from the corner as time was running out in the first half, giving the Raptors a one-point lead at the break. Sareen lit the spark this game desperately needed.
“It gave us some juice,” Radnor coach Rob Baxter said. “I thought we played well without that, but that was really big. We talked about coming out (in the third quarter) and starting off right off the bat.”
The momentum boost carried over for the fifth-seeded Raptors, who dominated the second half and rolled past the defending Central League champion and No. 4 Jaguars, 50-32.
Radnor (15-8) will travel to No. 1 Haverford (22-0) in the semifinal round Saturday.
After Jordan Daubenberger made three free throws to give Garnet Valley a 17-15 lead late in the second quarter, preceding Sareen’s corner buzzer beater, Radnor outscored the host team 35-15 the rest of the way. The difference was the all-around efficiency of the Raptors, who were economical with their field goal attempts (13-for-23) and brilliant at the foul line (21-for-26). In the fourth quarter they converted 17 of 20 attempts from the charity stripe.
Garnet Valley managed only two free-throw attempts after halftime. Radnor’s gritty zone defense also did a fine job shutting down sophomore Haylie Adamski (seven points), the Jags’ leading scorer.
“Our play the whole first half was so good and we shut Adamski down,” said Sareen, who scored a game-high 16 points and went 6-for-8 at the foul line. “We were just playing so well together and I thought all of that combined pushed us in the third and fourth quarters.”
The Raptors outhustled the Jaguars on rebounds and loose balls and did a better job executing their plays on offense. Whether it was Meg Dole pulling up to go 4-for-4 from the floor or freshman Anna Reger driving to the rack for an easy layup on a nice feed from Sareen, it was obvious that Radnor had the upper hand in the second half in every facet.
Perhaps things would have gone differently for the Raptors had Sareen not drilled that 3-ball at the end of the second quarter.
“That fully gave us the momentum,” said guard Kate Gallagher, who scored nine of her 11 points at the free-throw line (9-for-10) in the fourth quarter and had team highs in rebounds (six) and assists (four). “We knew we were in the game, but then that really kind of sealed us into it. Everyone in the locker room at halftime knew that we were going to win the game after that.”
Garnet Valley (13-10) had terrible luck making jump shots, shooting a paltry 11 of 57 (19.3 percent) from the floor including 4 of 27 (14.8 percent) from 3-point distance.
“When we went into the game we knew that we had to control the tempo. So when we got the lead, we knew that we could step up on defense and try to cause some turnovers,” Gallagher said. “You know, kind of get them uncomfortable and out of their rhythm.”
Jaguars sophomore guard Kylie Mulholland did what she could to manage the offense, but when the Jags kicked the ball outside to their wing players, they didn’t convert enough. Adamski hit only a pair of shots, both from 3-point range. Jordan Daubenberger led the Jags with 10 points, seven of which came in the first half.
Garnet Valley will prepare for the District 1 Class 6A tournament next week.
“Their coach made some real nice adjustments and they were making their shots,” GV coach Joe Woods said. “They wore us down a little bit and forced us into some bad shots. Overall, you’ve got to give credit to them. They made their shots when they had to and made their free throws when they had to. They’ve got a lot of real nice players that can score and they did a nice job. We didn’t convert when when we had our opportunities.”
