Lee escapes near-upset by Falcons
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AMHERST - The Smith Academy girls basketball team was 1.3 seconds and one rebound away from one of the biggest upsets in championship Saturday history.
Instead, perennial superpower Lee got the rebound and the game-tying basket as regulation ended, and went on to earn a 60-56 overtime victory in the Western Massachusetts Division 3 Tournament title game at the Curry Hicks Cage.
"Lee's known throughout western Mass. for winning championships. No one expected us to win," said Falcons senior guard Lindsay Gondek, who finished with six points. "Everyone expected us to lose by 20 or 30 points. So we knew that if we boxed out, got the boards, worked on fast breaks, we knew that we had a shot."
It was the 18th sectional title for the No. 1 Wildcats (22-1), their 17th since 1989 and seventh in the last eight years. And among all those championships, this was the first Lee squad to win the Berkshire North outright.
Allison Slysz gave No. 2 Smith Academy (20-3) a 51-49 lead with 18 seconds left when she followed her own 3-point miss from the right baseline with an offensive putback.
Lee senior Katie Eckart missed a 3-pointer from the top of the key. Tara Dooley and Alex Young both missed on offensive rebound attempts before Stephanie Young grabbed the ball and was fouled by Steph Slysz with 1.3 seconds left.
Lee called time-out before sending the freshman standout to the line.
Young, normally the team's top foul shooter, missed the first attempt and then back-rimmed the second, but Dooley, at 5-foot-4, snatched the rebound and flicked it up and in as time expired to send the game into overtime.
"Tara has been on the glass for us all year," Lee coach Gary Wellington said. "You know she's going to get to the ball somehow, some way."
While the Wildcats celebrated, the Falcons tried to regroup for the four-minute overtime period.
"We kind of let our heads hang a little bit. We were 1.3 seconds away from winning this game," said Allison Slysz, a junior. "We had to try to move on and know that we had four more minutes, keep on working hard and see if we could pull this off yet again."
But the momentum had already shifted.
Smith, which led from the 3:10 mark in the first quarter until there was just 2:52 left in the fourth, took one last advantage when Alyssa Klepacki converted one of two foul shots in the first possession of overtime.
Eileen Dooley knocked down a floater from the lane and Eckart followed with a steal and a fast-break layup.
Another Smith turnover on a questionable traveling call led to a jumper by Stephanie Young in the lane and five-point lead for the Wildcats with 2:10 left in overtime.
The Falcons never again got within less than three points and settled for the runner-up trophy.
"We had a chance. They played their hearts out. We watched (Lee beat Ware in the semifinals) the other day and they looked tremendous," Smith coach Ted Wilcox said. "I thought the practices we ran to prepare were very intense and they executed the game plan to a T. It's a great group of girls.
"It was all about effort. Everybody says 110, but they put in a legitimate 100. We were one rebound away."
Abeni Davies finished with a 15 points and 12 rebounds, while Allison Slysz had 11 points and eight rebounds and Klepacki had 10 points and four rebounds.
"In the last game (a 45-43 semifinal win against Sabis), we didn't do a lot of boxing out and they got a lot of boards," Davies said. "So the main focus was rebounding. We knew that would be even more important than usual."
Stephanie Young led Lee with 19 points, while her older sister Alex Young added 15. Eckart, who had a career-high 33 points against Ware, was limited to 12 points while Tara Dooley scored 10.
Lee will play central Massachusetts champion Quaboag Regional (20-4) in the state semifinals at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday at the MassMutual Center in Springfield.
The Wildcats led 10-9 midway through the first quarter, but Sarah Wickles knocked down a 3-pointer from the top of the key and Allison Slysz made a pair of jumpers in the lane as Smith took a 16-12 lead into the first break.
"We came into the this game knowing that this is Lee and that they've won so many times in the past. They have more to lose than we do," Allison Slysz said. "We wanted to go out there and play as hard as we can as a team and make them scared.
"That made us play even better and harder to want to make them realize that we are good and that we could beat them," she added.
Lee scored four quick points to even the score early in the second, but Smith responded with a 9-4 run, highlighted by four points by Gondek and another 3-pointer from Wickles.
The team traded baskets until halftime, when Smith enjoyed a 32-28 advantage.
"I didn't think we played as hard as we needed to in the first half," Wellington said. "At halftime, I told them that this is it. They had to pick it up,
"We held them at bay for the most part, got ourselves into it and put ourselves in a position to make that last shot," he added.
Lee then forced six third-quarter turnovers to cut the deficit to 41-40 going into the fourth. The Wildcats finally took the lead when Alex Young found Stephanie Young for a layup on a nice dish from the post to make it 44-43 with 2:52 left.
Allison Slysz made a floater from the right baseline to retake the lead, but Alex Young had another nice dish from the post, this time to Tara Dooley for a short jumper in the lane with 1:55 remaining.
Davies then scored from the post and Gondek knocked down a pair of jumpers for a 49-46 lead with 49.3 seconds left.
Eckart, who had struggled from the field all game, then knocked down her big 3-pointer from the top of the key to even the game and set up the late heroics by both Allison Slysz and Tara Dooley.
"It was an amazing game," Allison Slysz said. "I think it will be big for all of us coming back next year. Now that they've actually gotten here and played here, it will only make them want to get back even more."
Jim Pignatiello can be reached at jpignatiello@gazettenet.com.
