GA basketball comes up short against Irish, 45-41

by Tom Utescher
Posted 12/31/69

Germantown Academy ended the brief 2020-21 basketball season with a 68-37 loss to the visiting Academy of Notre Dame.

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GA basketball comes up short against Irish, 45-41

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Germantown Academy ended the brief 2020-21 basketball season with a 68-37 loss to the visiting Academy of Notre Dame. The Irish were already 10 points ahead of the host Patriots by the end of the first quarter, and they led 39-16 at the half.

Last Tuesday, Notre Dame won again at GA, but this time the final score was much closer, 45-41. The Patriots led by as many as six points late in the first quarter, then trailed by one point at halftime. The Irish went up by a dozen early in the fourth frame, then GA rallied.

Sophomore guard Izzy Casey hit three lay-ups in the final 50 seconds, sharing the team high of 14 points with classmate Sam Wade. Junior center Kendall Bennett had five points, sophomore Jenna Aponick scored four, and sophomore Jessica Aponik and freshman Jessica Kolecki contributed two points apiece as GA emerged with a record of 5-4 overall and 0-2 in the league.

The Patriots' other league loss came at Penn Charter by a 10-point margin. The Quakers and Notre Dame tied for first place last winter, but their first meeting of the current season, scheduled for January 7, was snowed out.

At GA last Tuesday, the Irish received a game-high 22 points from senior Maeve McErlane, a shooting guard who has signed with DePaul University. Her classmate Julia Dever, the point guard, scored 10 points, junior forward Katie Halligan had nine, and junior guard Annie Greek had four. Notre Dame went home with a record of 3-0 in the league and 8-2 overall.

The game began with a three-pointer from the left wing by Wade, and Casey added another a little later. When Bennett scored from the paint off of a pass from Jess Aponik, the Irish called time-out, trailing 8-3 about three-and-a-half minutes into the contest.

The visitors were still behind by five (12-7) when McErlane hit her first three-pointer with a little over 90 seconds left in the first period. Casey rebounded her own miss and scored for GA, and Wade hit a transition lay-up to put the Pats up by six points. With four seconds left, a trey launched from the right flank by McErlane went through the hoop to set the tally at 16-13 for the start of the second round.

Jessica Aponik had committed the game's first foul, and now she picked up her second and third in the first minute-and-a-half of the second period. On offense, GA got a lay-up from Kolecki and another "three" from Wade, and midway through the quarter GA was up 21-17.

A jumper by Halligan and a drive by Greek evened it up for the Irish, who then took the lead for the first time when Halligan put away one of two free throws to make it 22-21 with 27 seconds remaining in the half. The scoreboard tilted back toward GA when Wade swooped in from the left and hit a runner, but just before the buzzer McErlane came across the foul line and popped in a short, soft jump shot, putting the visitors up 24-23 at the intermission.

After Bennett hit two lay-ups for the Patriots in the first four minutes of the game, she was held without a field goal the rest of the way. The Irish, and Halligan in particular, defended the 6'2" GA center well, and the Patriots were rarely able to find a way to get the ball inside to the tallest player on the court.

More than halfway through the third quarter, the visitors' lead had grown only slightly, to three points at 30-27. This tally, however, included driving lay-ups by Jess Aponik and Wade that made up the total of just four points scored by the Patriots during the period. Over the last two minutes, the Irish pulled away with a 7-0 run, as McErlane sandwiched a three-pointer and a lay-up around two free throws by Greek.

That created a double-digit gap (37-27) for the start of round four, and then the Notre Dame lead peaked at a dozen points when Dever scored in transition early in the final frame.

A GA inbounds pass set up Casey for a trey from the right side, Bennett made one of two free throws, and then Wade deposited a lay-up with just over three-and-a-half minutes remaining. The Pats had cut their deficit in half (39-33), but the Irish were now in the foul bonus, and McErlane extracted both points from a one-and-one with 2:23 on the clock.

GA's Jenna Aponik canned a 15-footer from the right wing to make it a six-point game once more, then on their next possession the Irish ran the shot clock almost all the way down and then had McErlane bag a "three". The final minute began with the visitors up 44-35.

Casey penetrated for a GA lay-up, and the Irish called time-out with 41 seconds left. When the visitors came down the court the Patriots were able to execute a trap along the sideline and Notre Dame turned the ball over out of bounds.

Casey drove for another lay-up, then the Pats had to foul, sending AND's Dever to the line to make the first of two shots with 14 seconds left. Down 45-39, Germantown came down the floor one last time, and Casey dribbled in from the right to get off a runner that went in with two seconds to play. The Pats were still four points behind at the buzzer.