Bears’ Early Lead Disappears as Irvington Wins Another Title
Jackie Contento took her last walk back to the Briarcliff bench with just under a minute remaining on Saturday evening and the Bears’ quest for a Section 1, Class B championship all but over. She was hugged quickly by each of her sullen teammates before finally reaching coach Don Hamlin at the far end and exchanging an emotional and extended embrace.
For Contento, the lone senior starter, and the rest of the Bears, the final moments at the Westchester County Center brought tears of disappointment after their 10-point second-quarter lead quickly evaporated and the Irvington Bulldogs emerged with a 58-44 victory in the sectional final.
“I told them,” Hamlin would share later about the postgame message to his dejected young team, “that I never had a better captain than Jackie and have never been around a better person, and I’m gonna miss her tremendously. She set a high standard for us. Hopefully, we can follow it.”
If and when the Bears finally put an end to the Irvington dynasty that has now produced seven titles in the last eight years, Contento will no longer be on the roster. On Saturday night, she helped limit the offensive output of the Bulldogs’ star guard, Lindsay Halpin, but Olivia Valdes stepped out of the shadows to score a game-high 23 points while the Bears’ misfired on 15 of their 16 shots from beyond the 3-point line.
An 18-8 Briarcliff cushion a minute and a half into the second quarter slipped away as the Bears never scored again before halftime, and the top-seeded Bulldogs closed the period on a 12-0 burst, taking the lead on Halpin’s 3-pointer as the buzzer sounded.
“I thought we were playing really hard,” said Hamlin. “We just didn’t finish. We just didn’t put the ball in the basket enough to win the game. I thought at times we were trying too hard. We got good looks. We just didn’t finish.”
Briarcliff, seeded second and 20-2 this season, led virtually the entire first half. After Valdes raced coast to coast for a layup to open the scoring 40 seconds into the game, the Bears proceeded to score the next 10 points, getting six of them from freshman Alana Lombardi and the other four from sophomore Kacey Hamlin, who finished with a team-high 14.
The Bulldogs went scoreless for nearly three and a half minutes, but were still within 12-8 before Maddie Plank threaded a perfect pass underneath to Contento, who sent a shot high off the glass and into the basket with 1:13 left in the first quarter. With three seconds remaining, Plank connected on a 15-foot pullup jumper and the Bears took a 16-8 lead into the second quarter.
Unfortunately for the Bears, who had been demolished by Irvington when the teams met back in mid-December, two free throws by Plank with 6:34 to go turned out to be their only points of the second quarter. Just 20 seconds after her foul shots, Plank was whistled for her third foul on a drive to the basket and the complexion of the contest suddenly changed as Irvington went on its huge 12-0 spurt.
Asked later if the Bulldogs’ big first-half finish, and especially the buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Halpin, had deflated his players, Hamlin said, “No, they were good. Their mood was tremendous. They were really pumped up at halftime. They knew we played most of the second quarter without Maddie with her third foul. You know, Kacey with two, so she really couldn’t engage as much as we would’ve liked.”
The second half began with the Bears regaining the lead with seven straight points as Plank, who wound up with 13 points, seven rebounds and five assists, hit a turnaround jumper, Hamlin made a scoop shot in the lane and Plank added a straightaway 3-pointer. Irvington, though, answered with its own 7-0 run to grab a 27-25 edge.
A baseline jumper by Lombardi tied the game, then the Bears took their final lead of the night, 29-28, as Plank dropped in an 18-foot jumper from right of the key. The Bulldogs gained the upper hand for good on two free throws by Mary Brereton with 3:18 left in the third quarter and built a six-point margin before Contento nailed a right-side 18-footer to move Briarcliff within 35-31 heading to the fourth.
Irvington had outscored the Bears 7-2 to close the third quarter, then began the final period with six straight points. A pair of free throws by Hamlin cut the Bears’ deficit to 41-33 with 5:29 left on the clock. Two more foul shots by Hamlin with 4:27 to go and then her fast-break layup after stealing the ball trimmed the Bulldogs’ lead to 45-37 with 3:17 remaining.
But that was as close as the Bears would get the rest of the way. Brereton was soon credited with a 3-pointer even though both of her feet were inside the arc on a shot near the top of the key. Contento provided her final point in a Bears uniform with 1:07 left, then was summoned to the bench 10 seconds later with the Bears behind by a dozen points.
The rest of the Briarcliff starters, the underclassmen who will likely threaten to finally end Irvington’s dominance in the years ahead, joined her moments later, taking the same slow, tearful walk back to the bench, where they soon witnessed the giddy celebration at the other end of the floor as the Bulldogs celebrated their third straight Class B championship.
“Hopefully we’ll learn from this experience,” said Hamlin, whose team had defeated Valhalla as Lombardi and Contento combined for 28 points in Tuesday’s semifinal at the County Center. “Hopefully we continue to get better because if you don’t get better, then you come in second again.”
Andy is a sports editor at Examiner Media, covering seven high schools in the mid-Westchester region with a notebook and camera. He began there in the fall of 2007 following 15 years as a candid photographer for the largest school picture company in the tri-state area.
Read more of Andy’s full bio here.
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