LYNN ? Everybody played, almost everybody scored, and no one got hurt.
Perhaps the last qualifier was the most important takeaway for the St. Mary’s High girls’ basketball team, which opened the defense of its Division 3 state championship with a 78-21 rout of Excel Friday night in a quarterfinal round game at the Tony Conigliaro Gym.
As the score might suggest, this one was over early. The No. 3-seeded Spartans (18-5) scored more points in the first six minutes than the sixth-seeded Knights (9-6) scored in the entire game.
?Obviously, we were better than them in every aspect of the game,” St. Mary’s coach Jeff Newhall said. “But as I just told the girls in the locker room, you can’t take chances when you’re playing in the state tournament and one loss sends you home. What I liked was that we came out and put the game away early. It was pretty much over after the first three minutes.”
Kayla Carter led the Spartans with 17 points, while Olivia Nazaire added 13 and Gianna Moschella had 11. For Excel, which is one of the three schools in the former South Boston High (the Knights still wear Southie’s old uniforms), only three players scored. But Destinee Morris managed to crack double figures with 11 points.
The degree of difficulty gets harder right away for the Spartans, who will face second-seeded Winthrop, which defeated North Reading, 51-33, on Friday. The Spartans edged the Vikings by two points in an epic Division 3 North sectional final last year.
?We go right away from a game like this to a game against the best team in the Northeastern Conference,” Newhall said. “There are 16 (Division 3) teams left in the state, and every one of them is good.”
Friday night, St. Mary’s opened with a 19-0 run, as Excel was unable to handle any aspect of the Spartans’ game, including a full-court press in the first few minutes that led to turnovers and easy hoops. Of the 27 points the Spartans scored in the first quarter, all but five came in the paint, usually fast-break layups or putbacks.
The Knights didn’t score a field goal until Morris hit a 15-footer from the left wing with 7:37 left in the first half. Excel actually went on a mini run of 6-2 early in the second quarter, but Carter and Temi Falayi combined for the next 12 points as St. Mary’s closed out the half with a 41-10 lead.
If there was any doubt remaining about the outcome, the Spartans obliterated it by opening the second half with a 15-0 run, again mostly on a series of layups and easy fast-break buckets. Amanda Idusuyi’s basket off an inbounds play made the score 56-10, with 3:02 left in the third quarter.As in the first quarter, Excel was held without a field goal in the fourth quarter. Katie Dixon closed out the game with a couple of baskets, and Kelli Powers and Daniela Napolitano also scored in the waning moments of the game.