Wolverines heating up

What Griswold needed was something to lift their confidence.
What it got was a win over Montville last Friday.
Will it be enough of a boost for the Wolverines girls basketball team to make the postseason remains to be seen, but Griswold took another step in that direction on Monday night as it dropped New London, 56-36.
“I think we’re a new team now,” senior Cailin Sorder said. “We didn’t have a good record before that (Montville) game. We know we have to win the next three-out-of-five to make states and, hopefully, we can accomplish it.”
Griswold coach Tim Lagace stepped back and rolled his eyes a bit when he considered the question of making the state tournament. He has to hope to steal a win against two of the top 15 teams in the state as the Wolverines play Windham tonight and Bacon Academy on Friday. If that doesn’t happen, they would have to win out against the likes of Stonington, Killingly and Woodstock.
“Who knows?” Lagace said. “Anything can happen. We beat Montville and, with a little bit of luck, who knows? It, obviously, has to be our goal now.”
But the Wolverines (5-10) have to take it one game at a time and the first hurdle was the much-improved Whalers.
The problem for New London on Monday night was poor shooting. The Whalers made just 17-of-57 attempts from the floor.
“We had a lot of attempts, a lot of nice shots —the shots we wanted them to take,” New London coach Linda Pfeiffer said. “We just couldn’t put it in the basket.”
Still, the Whalers (8-7) hung around and trailed by only five points at the beginning of the fourth quarter, 36-31. Griswold’s Cailin Sorder (nine points) and New London’s Kendra Ferraro (nine points, eight rebounds) traded baskets before Griswold caught fire.
Katherine Pearce sank a free throw and Taylor McGrath put one in from outside to make it 41-33 Griswold. Catlyn Hughes added all six of her points on the night to put the Wolverines up 13 with 2:59 left. Samantha Rentz (who scored a team-high 13 points) finished off the Whalers as her four consecutive points gave Griswold a 15-point lead with two minutes to play.
“We just wanted to settle it down, control our offense, run our plays and get good looks,” Rentz said of the fourth quarter rally. “We were just going for open shots and open layups and if we had a fast break, we were just going for it.”
It’s a good thing the Wolverines got the points from the floor, because the foul shots were a whole other issue. The Wolverines helped keep the Whalers in the game a bit longer by making just 8-of-25 from the charity stripe.
“I was a big part of that,” Sorder said. “Next practice, definitely, a lot of foul shooting.”
Lagace just turned and shook his head when he thought about the free-throw shooting.
“I don’t know what to say about that, it’s not like we don’t shoot free throws,” Lagace said. “You don’t what it is; it could be that we were working hard on defense and didn’t have the legs, but you know how free throws go — it can be up and down.”