Cony takes second consecutive gold ball

loading...

PORTLAND – The idea was to harass Cony point guard Amy Vachon until she coughed up the ball.

Westbrook double-teamed the 5-foot-7 senior and forced the defending state champions into eight second-half turnovers, including four traveling calls, as the Blue Blazes ate into what was an 11-point deficit, bringing themselves as close as 42-37 with 5:19 remaining in the fourth quarter.

That’s when Vachon suggested reserve sophomore guard Tracey Frye take the point, moving herself to shooting guard during a Cony-called timeout.

Four seconds later, Vachon made her way through the Blue Blazes’ press and scored the Rams’ first points in nearly four minutes, leading Cony of Augusta to its second consecutive state Class A schoolgirl basketball title with a 54-51 win at the Cumberland County Civic Center.

“All I know is I kept looking up at the clock and it said 39 for the longest time,” Amy Vachon said.

“I think we were flustered, but we’re so experienced and we just got flustered. We had to regain our composure,” said Vachon.

Frye’s cool and three assists in the remaining minutes put the Rams’ offense back on track, as she found Christine Huber three times in the post and drove for a layup herself in a 2:06 span.

“They were on Amy so tight. I’m the backup point guard. I just needed to step up and bring the ball up,” Frye said. “Nobody expected me to come in, and they didn’t notice me.”

Everything after that was second nature for Frye.

“You know where Christine is all the time, and after we broke the press, they were all on Amy,” Frye said.

And for the man with the 215-18 coaching record, including 44-0 the last two years, that was the game.

“That was the turning point in the game, when Amy made that big-time substitution,” said Cony coach Paul Vachon.

Westbrook brought itself within three when sophomore Morgan McEwen hit both of her free throws with 1:26 remaining to finish with eight points, and senior Jess Davis hit two with a minute left.

But the Blue Blazes couldn’t get any closer than 52-51, despite Cony’s sudden nervousness at the free throw line.

Erica Pridham netted the second of her two attempts with 22 seconds to go, and Vachon hit the first end of two when Davis was called for an intentional foul after Vachon made her sixth steal with 13 seconds left.

But it was Huber who iced it with 11 seconds left, hitting the second of her two attempts and avoiding a re-enactment of another season-ending loss.

“My freshman year on JV and we were at Skowhegan and I missed two final free throws to lose the game,” Huber said. “They just hit the inside of the rim and bounced off long.

“And my first foul shot hit the same exact part of the rim and bounced off long,” she said. “I thought, `I’ve got to make this one. I’m not going to lose this game.”‘

The Blue Blazes put the Rams on notice early, charging out to a 12-10 first-quarter lead, after going on a 12-4 run on the back of three Erica Eldridge baskets.

But Cony extinguished the Blazes’ fire in a 15-4 second quarter, highlighted by three Vachon layups, including one off a spectacular half-court steal that was converted at the buzzer.

Making the steal, Vachon made a run for the basket, but a Westbrook defender tipped the ball away and ahead of Vachon. The ball then bounced off the face of a defending Bri Fecteau, up and over her head, and Vachon caught up with it in the paint, took a step, and laid it in at the buzzer.

After that, it seemed little could go wrong for the Rams, but Westbrook put together a tenacious man-to-man defense and stalled the Rams’ uptempo offense, allowing the two-time Western Maine champs to go on a 9-0 quarter-spanning run.

“We were really concentrating on defense, and when we got to the offensive end, we weren’t converting on our open shots,” Frye said.

Perhaps most astonishing was Cony’s restraint from the 3-point arc. The Rams hit only two of their 13 3-point attempts and only launched two 3-pointers in the second half.

Cony outrebounded Westbrook 25-15 as Vachon took top honors with seven boards to go with her 17 points. Huber added three boards and 14 points, and Frye and Pridham had eight points each.

Fecteau and Eldridge (18 points) did their best to keep the Blue Blazes close enough to taste a state crown, scoring 26 of Westbrook’s 35 second-half points.

“We took the ball out of her [Fecteau] hands quite a bit, especially in the first half when we took the lead,” Paul Vachon said. “In the third quarter when we were up by 11, she said, `No, I want it now, so she did it,’ and Eldridge had a great game and made some big hoops.”

“We did what we wanted to do, and those were 22 hard-earned [Fecteau] points,” he said.

But the defense that brought Westbrook so close eventually lapsed.

“We worked so hard on the defensive end in certain sections, and then we had a little lapse,” Westbrook coach Ben Palubinskas said. “Not that we didn’t get back. We didn’t stay down, and they got some nice easy baskets.”

Rams 54, Blazes 51

Cony (22-0) Westbrook (20-2)

Name G AG F AF TP Name G AG F AF TP

Frye 3 6 1 2 8 Davis 0 3 2 2 2

Foster 0 2 1 2 1 Mayol 0 1 0 0 0

Riese 1 5 0 0 2 Francoeur 0 3 1 2 1

Pridham 3 8 1 3 8 Fecteau 10 21 2 2 22

Vachon 6 13 5 7 17 Eldridge 9 10 0 0 18

R.LaRoch’lle 2 4 0 0 4 McEwen 2 10 4 6 8

Gardiner 0 0 0 2 0 Grover 0 0 0 0 0

Huber 5 11 4 8 14

Totals 20 49 12 24 54 Totals 21 48 9 12 51

Cony 10 25 39 54

Westbrook 12 16 30 51

3-pt. goals: Cony (2-13), Fyre 1-3, Foster 0-1, Riese 0-3, Vachon 0-1, Pridham 1-4, R. LaRochelle 0-1; Westbrook (0-7), Davis 0-1, Mayol 0-1, Fecteau 0-1,

Eldridge 0-1, Mor. McEwen 0-3