AMHERST — With the season on the line, the Greenfield High School offense finally found its footing in the final eight minutes on Wednesday night.
Led by Samantha Smith, Greenfield scored 23 points in the fourth quarter after managing just 32 points through the first three and the fourth-seeded Green Wave edged top-seeded South Hadley High School, 55-53, in the WMass Division 3 semifinals at Curry Hicks Cage.
The win sends the Green Wave (19-3) to their first WMass championship game since 1990 when it fell to the Rebecco Lobo-led Southwick. Greenfield will face second-seeded Hoosac Valley, which crushed third-seeded Wahconah, 56-32, in Wednesday’s other semifinal. The championship game will be played Saturday at 2:15 p.m. at Curry Hicks Cage.
“Getting the chance to play for a Western Mass. title is pretty awesome. We’re used to playing in it for field hockey, but never for basketball,” Raegan Hickey said.
Her coach and father John Hickey said that getting a chance to coach in the finals is a great opportunity.
“It’s a special group of kids, and being able to do it with my daughter is very special. I’m proud of these kids,” he said.
It almost never happened, as the Green Wave struggled offensively for much of the night. Despite having beaten South Hadley 49-33 earlier in the season, the Green Wave looked lost on offense for the first three quarters of the game.
The deciding quarter saw Samantha Smith take over. The Green Wave’s senior center scored 13 of her game-high 21 points in the fourth quarter to get the Green Wave going.
“It starts to set in, you’re losing, it’s the last quarter of my career,” Smith said. “I’m like, ‘all right, things have got to change here, we’ve got to be on the upper end of this.’ I don’t know, we just started to get the jitters out and play like we needed to play. We just need to come out like that.”
After Mia Kelly made a pair of free throws 41 seconds into the fourth, the Tigers (16-6) led 37-32, which matched their largest lead of the game. The Green Wave, in desperate need of a basket, came down the court and missed their initial shot, but Smith grabbed the rebound and scored on the putback. That basket set the Wave on a 10-2 run that helped Greenfield take a 42-39 advantage with 4:56 to play. Smith scored eight of the Wave’s 10 points during that run, including a 10-foot, turnaround jump shot.
“I just told her at halftime, ‘we need you,’” John Hickey said. “I’ve been telling her all year that she is going to go as far as she takes. We have Raegan and Katie, they are constant. We need rebounding, we need post play and Sam’s the girl. If she can play like she did in the fourth quarter, then we will be right there on Saturday. She just came alive, she got a little more aggressive.”
South Hadley responded with a 4-0 run to go back in front, but a free throw by Smith tied the game and a 3-pointer by Katie Haselton with 2:40 to play gave the Green Wave a 46-43 lead it never relinquished. South Hadley kept things close, but the Wave was able to open up a six-point lead in the final minute. A pullup jumper by Haselton with 45 seconds left put the Wave up 5, and then with 11 seconds left, Olivia Joy scored on a fast-break layup to give the Wave a 55-50 lead. Kelly knocked down a 3-pointer at the buzzer for the final score.
The first half saw Greenfield struggle from the field. The Green Wave took 12 3-pointers in the first half and only made one, that coming from Hickey with 3:04 to play in the second quarter.
Hickey was the only effective scorer for the Wave in the first 16 minutes, as she scored 16 of her team’s 22 points. Smith knocked down two of her five shots for four points, and Olivia Joy had a layup for the only other Green Wave points in the first half. Despite the Wave’s offensive struggles, it still managed to take a 22-21 lead into the break.
“That was the first thing I told the team,” Hickey said of holding the lead at the break. “I didn’t feel we played extremely well and to go in up one I was happy. It wasn’t pretty, but a wins a win and we’re moving on.”
While the Wave’s offense struggled, the defense was up to the challenge, limiting South Hadley’s leading scorer, Kelly, to just five points in the opening half. Paige Marjanski scored six points in the first half to lead a balanced attack.
Kelly struggled for much of anything throughout the night and finished with 15 points. Sophomore guard Haselton and freshman guard Racquel Provost helped keep her in check.
“We definitely wanted to deny her,” Haselton said. “She is their highest scorer so we just had to shut her down. We had a little plan to keep it rotated so we were all fresh on her. I think we did a pretty good job.”
Provost said that keeping up with one of the top scorers in western Mass. was no easy task.
“It was a big challenge,” she began. “I knew I had to slide my feet, get low and be big. She is quick. She can do everything. Shoot, drive, so it’s a big challenge.”
The third quarter started with a Smith putback to push the Wave’s lead to 24-21, but South Hadley went on a 10-0 run over a five-minute span to take a 31-24 lead, it’s largest of the game. Greenfield wound up going on a 8-4 run to end the half to cut the deficit to three (35-32) heading into the fourth. That set up the dramatic finish and the chance for players like Hickey, Smith, Haselton, Provost and Joy to win a western Mass. title in their third sport, as they already have titles in field hockey and softball.
“Unbeatable, like literally incomparable,” Smith said of the opportunity. “We’ve never been here in basketball. We’re just checking off the list.”
Smith finished with a double-double as she had 21 points, 15 rebounds and five blocked shots. Hickey wound up with 18 points, four rebounds and three steals, while Haselton added 11 points, four assists and five steals.
Kelly’s 15 points led South Hadley, while Brooke Zatowski had 11 points, and Isabelle Earle had 10 points.