NFA takes home ECC title

Call them Norwich as Bacon’s McKenzie Hyde suggested after the Bobcats advanced to the title game Wednesday or call them NFA, just call them good- Hyde and her teammates won’t argue.
The Wildcats returned to the top of the Eastern Connecticut Conference in girl’s basketball as the No. 1 seed captured the tournament championship with a 60-53 win over No. 2 Bacon Academy Friday night at Plainfield High School.
It’s the third time in four years that NFA has claimed the crown after a brief blip last year when the Wildcats fell to the Heather Buck-led Stonington Bears on NFA’s home floor.
“It’s nice, and you know, we even won a championship when it wasn’t on our court, so I guess that’s a good thing,” NFA coach Bill Scarlata said referring to the league’s decision to move the semifinals and championship game from Norwich to Plainfield this year.
What made it even more special to the players, such as tournament Most Valuable Player Kastine Evans, was that not only will all of the starters be able to bask in this year’s title, but all come back for another shot at it next year.
“Last year, we were still young and that might have been an excuse,” Evans said. “We showed this year that, even though we’re still young – all juniors and a sophomore – that we’re still able to come out and play against seniors.”
There comes a time in most games when the tide just seems to turn and Friday night was no exception as the two teams had battled through 22 ½ minutes against one another and were tied at 38.
That’s when the aspect of NFA’s game that worried Bacon coach Dave Shea the most, their famous pressure, started to take its toll.
Bacon was in the process of regrouping just a bit as Hyde (12 points, six rebounds) had been forced to the bench with her fourth foul when NFA struck. Jen Escobido hit a free throw to give the Wildcats the one-point lead. Bacon managed to get the ball down the floor, but a missed shot was followed by a travel call and Evans –who didn’t get a basket until 2 ½ minutes were left in the first half- followed a Gen Barlow miss for two of her game-high 24 points.
The Bobcats turned over the ball three more times before NFA capitalized again on an Evans basket off a nice feed from Stephanie Long. Another Bacon turnover, this time on a bad pass that landed in Escobido’s hands, resulted in two more fast break points for the Wildcats as they went up by seven, 45-38, with 6:13 left.
“We started playing defense with about three minutes left in the third period, that turned the game around,” Scarlata said. “I told them to come out and play as hard as they could from the get-go, they probably thought the game didn’t start until the end of the third period.”
NFA sophomore Jahira Smith was named to the all-tournament team despite scoring just one point in the game because of her role in causing the disruption of the Bacon offense.
“That’s where we wanted them, once we got them to that point, that was it- that was the turning point of the game,” Smith said of the defensive flurry that put the Wildcats in the lead for good.
“I think we rushed a lot, it was real intimidating and we let it get to us,” said Bacon sophomore guard Katie Mahoney who led the Bobcats with 19 points.
The Bobcats were so flustered that Shea was out of time outs with five minutes left in the game as he tried to rally his Bobcats. It almost succeeded as the Colchester squad was within four with 4:13 to play but a 7-2 NFA run took away whatever hopes the Bobcats still harbored. Long (17 points) capped it with six free throws and a basket for NFA as Bacon saw its 19-game win streak end at the hands of the last team who beat them in December.
“It’s not a disappointment,” Shea said, “it would have been a great thing had we won, but we knew it was going to be a real tough game. It would have been a disappointment if we had been blown out of here by 20 points or something, but this got us ready for the state tournament.”
Senior Brooke Bailey, who finished with 13 points and eight rebounds, agreed with her coach.
“(It was) Really good preparation (for the state tournament), it was good to play the game,” the forward said.