FILE PHOTO
Paris Wilkey scored 24 points in Classical’s win against Salem.
By STEVE KRAUSE
LYNN — Now that the Classical girls basketball team has made the tournament, coach Tom Sawyer doesn’t want to see them resting on their laurels.
The Rams got out of the gate quickly Tuesday night and coasted to a 52-24 win over Salem, raising their record to 11-3. But Sawyer has bigger things in mind.
“We still have an awful lot to play for,” he said. “We want to win the league, and we’re going to need some help to do that, and we also want a home game (in the tournament). It’s been a long time since we’ve had a home game.”
Revere currently leads the Northeastern Conference/North, with a two-game lead on both the Rams and Danvers. Classical has to play each team one more time.
With both the boys and girls basketball teams at Classical working on good seasons, it could very well be that both teams end up with at least one home game come tournament time.
“Wouldn’t that be something?” asked Sawyer. “Wouldn’t it be great to give the MIAA some scheduling problem?”
The game gave both Sawyer and John Fortunato of Salem a chance to see their players under a different sort of light. For Sawyer, he got a chance to see some of his backup players get some significant action, as the Rams sprinted out to a 33-6 halftime lead. Eleven players took to the floor for Classical, and eight of them scored. By far, the most prolific of those 11 players was junior Paris Wilkey, who scored 24 of her team’s points. Irianis Delgado had seven, and Soneta Srey six.
“Actually,” said Sawyer, “I thought our defense played really well. Salem has a lot of active players and we had to work to keep them in check.”
Salem got 12 points from junior co-captain Wildarys Correa and six more from sophomore forward Samantha Coppola, who was recently brought up from the junior varsity.
Despite the loss Fortunato was happy with his players’ effort.
“I am proud of the way the girls played,” he said. “They played hard, and worked hard. That’s all you can ask.
“Classical is a good team, and they’re having a good year. Tom does a great job. They are well-coached.”
Classical jumped out to a 10-0 lead before Salem scored, and by the end of the first quarter it was 18-2. Classical kept the pressure up in the second period, and led, 33-6, at the break.
Early in the second half, Sawyer began substituting and stayed with his bench players for the remainder of the game.
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].