Gwynedd Mercy withstands St. Basil’s hot start to stay unbeaten
LOWER GWYNEDD >> For the first three games of the year, the Gwynedd Mercy Academy girls basketball team has come out early, taken the lead and rode the momentum to victory.
However, Friday night was a little bit different of a story as they took on St. Basil in a matchup of undefeated Catholic Academies teams.
Early on it was all Panthers, as they controlled the paint and broke Gwynedd’s press with some ease. But after they shot out to a 10-6 lead, the GMA realized it was in for a fight and something clicked for the Monarchs.
“In all three of our games so far we’ve never started the game losing.” GMA guard Brigit Coleman said. “Once we got down we realized what was happening and that we didn’t like how it felt, we were able to go out and play harder and give some extra effort, we knew we needed to pick it up.”
And pick it up is exactly what they did. After falling behind early, GMA went on a 19-2 run to close out the half and never looked back from there, cruising to a 43-29 victory.
Part of the problem early on was St. Basil’s Natalie Kucowski. The 6’2” forward got some penetration early on and hurt GMA, then she stepped out beyond the arc and hit a three just to show her range.
There aren’t a lot of players with Kucowki’s size and skill outside the paint at this level and Gwynedd Mercy coach Tom Lonergan knew it would be a challenge for his girls.
Starting center Megan Dougherty did a solid job trying to control Kucowski early on, but it was truly a team effort as Danielle Senour came off the bench for the Monarchs and was able to frustrate the long, athletic forward.
“She’s definitely a mismatch problem for anyone,” Lonergan said. “I thought (Megan) Dougherty, our starting center, did a good job initially on her but I thought Danielle Senour off the bench did a phenomenal job on her and that’s what we kind of needed.
“You can’t really play a player like her, at that level, with just one player and I thought between the two of them they ended up doing a pretty good job on her.”
Kucowski finished with a team-high 13 points, but her and teammate Maddie Riehman were the only St. Basil players able to score more than one field goal as the patented GMA press eventually wore down the Panthers.
As for their offensive game, The Monarchs weren’t missing much on that end either.
Coleman finished with a game-high 17 points, 12 of which came in the first half, as they turned a 10-6 deficit into a 25-12 lead at the break. She stayed hot from the floor all night, shooting 7-of-12 from the field including three 3-pointers that gave her team the boost they needed.
Coleman had not necessarily been lighting up the stat sheet in the team’s first three victories, so this was a much needed coming out party for her 2015-2016 season.
“It was a good breakout game for Brigit,” Lonergan said. “She was actually feeling under the weather earlier and she just had a great breakout game today. She worked hard trying to get her spots and she’s one of the players on the team that has the light to shoot the ball whenever she wants to and today she was using her legs a lot stronger than she did in the past few games.
“We certainly needed her offense today and she came up with some huge shots for us.”
In addition to Coleman, guard Erica DeCandido had a great night scoring 13 points of her own, but in somewhat of a different fashion.
DeCandido used her size and body control to drive the lane, get to the hoop, and draw the foul from the defense, finishing 7-of-8 from the free throw line.
All in all it was a great team win for the Monarchs, who look to be firing on all cylinders early this year.
