Huskies Avenge Previous Losses to Advance to Final

The Flint Hill girls basketball team knew they had to play differently from their past two outings against Bullis School for the Independent School League semifinal Saturday at Sidwell Friends School.

Earlier in the season, the Bulldogs had bested the Huskies twice, first by a 10-point margin then again by six points. To combat losing for a third time, the Huskies revved up their defense in the first half, waiting for an opportunity to surge offensively.

The opportunity came in third period, in which the Huskies surged too far ahead for the Bulldogs to be able to stage a comeback. The Huskies won 65-42 to advance to the ISL tournament's final game.

The game started with both teams squelching each other's offense. The Huskies held the Bulldogs scoreless for nearly five minutes to go ahead 6-0. But once the Bulldogs started scoring, the Huskies had trouble stopping them. The Bulldogs went on a 10-0 run to lead the Huskies by four.

Alex Long pulled the Huskies closer with a 3-pointer, and Katherine Doyle netted a free throw to even the score with 18.6 seconds left. Neither team scored for the rest of the first period, leaving the game tied 10-10 heading into the second period.

"We mixed up our defense," said Jody Patrick, head coach of the Huskies. "We're primarily a player-to-player defensive team ... but everyone knew we had to change something up, so we did. So we took advantage of what we thought their weakness was."

The Bulldogs took over the momentum to start the second period, outscoring the Huskies 8-2 in the first three minutes of the game. The Huskies snatched the momentum back to even the score at 19-19 with 58 seconds left in the half. Alison Bragaw-Butler sank two foul shots with two seconds remaining on the clock to give the Huskies a 21-19 advantage heading into halftime.

The third period proved decisive for the Huskies, as Nicole Freeman went on an offensive tear to post 15 of her season-high 23 points while the Husky defense continued to suffocate the Bulldogs. The Huskies led 43-33 at the end of the period.

"I just felt the momentum with the team and I knew we needed to pull away," Freeman said. "Bullis is a good team and we can't let them hang around."

Patrick said the plan was not to necessarily get the ball to Freeman, but to move the offense around to find the right opportunities.

"They weren't really playing her defensively the way I thought they might," Patrick said. "She has an incredible range on her 3. We just ran our offense and we found the hot player in Nicole."

Freeman and Long both scored a game-high 23 points Saturday.

The Huskies were able to stretch their lead even further in the fourth period, outscoring the Bulldogs 22-9. They had enough of a lead that Patrick put in her substitutes for the game's last 90 seconds.

The Huskies will face Georgetown Visitation at 1 p.m. Sunday for the ISL Championship game at Sidwell Friends School in Washington.

The Flint Hill squad has twice lost to the Cubs, who are undefeated in conference play.

"We're going to go in strong like we did today and crash the boards," Freeman said. "They're a really good shooting team so we need to box out, and just go in with a lot of momentum."

Patrick said she and her squad always look forward to playing the Cubs because they prove to be tough competition.

"It's fun playing them because they play really good basketball, and our players like that," Patrick said. "We have to be smarter than we've been in the last two games. We've made some mistakes and we just can't do that against a team like them."

Points: Nicole Freeman (23), Alex Long (23), Alison Bragaw-Butler (9), Courtney Wiley (3), Savannah Block (2), Shea Patrick (2), Claire Romansky (2), Katherine Doyle (1)