80 62
Final
Class 1A State Championship
The Potomac Highlands Dispatch
Phone: 301-264-3147
Email: [email protected]
P.O. Box 651
Mount Savage, MD 21545
Concept Associates
Deep Creek Lake, MD
Phone: 301-501-4404
'We've already had a blast'
Huskies coach Steve Fratz says team relaxed, ready
By Kevin Spradlin
PhDispatch.com
CATONSVILLE, March 12 - The Northern Garrett girls basketball team faces Paul Laurence Dunbar High School for the Maryland Class 1A championship.
Tip-off is set for 6 p.m. between the Huskies and Poets.
--
4:58 p.m. - both teams have entered UMBC's Recreational Activities Center in Catonsville and into their respective locker rooms.
---
5:05 p.m. - Coach Steve Fratz and assistants Pete Brosnihan, Dave Monahan, Jason Rice and Ron Opel head to the locker room to "talk to the girls one more time."
Meanwhile, fans are beginning to fill the UMBC arena - and so far, most of them are wearing blue and gold.
---
5:51 p.m. - just 4 minutes left in shootarounds. Both teams look loose, nice and relaxed. No giveaways, really, on how that might bode for the start of the game.
---
5:57 p.m. - if crowd size has anything to do with the outcome of this game, Northern will have this thing put away after 8 minutes. But the Poets girls team could be inspired by the boys team, who won the 1A boys state title earlier today and are on hand to watch the girls try and do the same.
---
halftime: Dunbar leads, 42-33
So far, Fratz has 17 points and McKenzie has 7. Brosnihan has 4, Butler 3 and Yommer 2.
Fratz leads with 5 rebounds - McKenzie and Brosnihan 2 each.
Michelle Wright has 18 points (12 in 2nd quarter alone) for Dunbar and Oma-ah Tayong has 10. Dunbar is crushing Northern on the boards, as expected, 19-10.
Surprisingly, the Huskies are shooting only 45.5 percent (5 for 11) from the free throw line.
-----
end of 3rd - 62-44 advantage Dunbar.
Congratulations Huskies on a fantastic season!
Bob Carney photo
Boxscore - provided by Your Statcrew LLC
Huskies fall to Dunbar in Class 1A state title game
Poets just too much for Northern Garrett squad
* Terra McKenzie: 'It's been a great ride'
* Morgan Brosnihan: 'We had a great time. We fell a little short ... but ... It still feels pretty great.'
* Kaitlynn Fratz: 'We beat Allegany. We beat Smithsburg. We beat tough teams, and there's nothing much more you can ask for.'
* Huskies finish with school record 23 wins and 5 losses
By Kevin Spradlin
PhDispatch.com
CATONSVILLE, March 12 - Maybe it was the fact the Northern Garrett girls basketball team played a second very physical game less than 20 hours after finishing another very challenging contest.
Maybe it was fatigue. Maybe it was a feeling of awe of being in the state title game - perhaps the role of underog finally got to the Huskies.
Or maybe - just maybe - the Paul Laurence Dunbar Poets simply overpowered and overwhelmed the Huskies for the Class 1A state championship. Dunbar won, 80-62, on Saturday at University of Maryland-Baltimore County's Recreational Activities Center. It was the team's fifth championship in team history.
Maybe Dunbar junior Michelle Wright, who scored 40 points - the fifth most ever in a state tournament game - was too much for Northern Garrett to handle. And if it wasn't her, then it was definitely 6-foot-3 center Oma-ah Tayong, who tallied 19 points.
Combined, Wright and Tayong hauled in 36 rebounds (21 for Wright). Dunbar outrebounded Northern on the night 50-21.
In the postgame interview, Wright said she was nervous. Funny. She sure didn't look it for any of the 32 minutes on the court.
The game started out well enough for Northern. Dunbar jumped out to an early 9-5 lead but the Huskies knotted it at 9-9 on a free throw by Terra McKenzie and a 3-pointer by Kaitlynn Fratz. The Poets went up 14-11, but again the Huskies came back to tie it.
At the end of the first quarter, Dunbar led, 21-18. But the Huskies pulled within 21-20 early in the second quarter on a perfectly executed screen from Brosnihan to Fratz.
That was the best Northern Garrett could offer, though. Dunbar hit two field goals - one by Brianna Lawson and a 3-pointer Shanette Parker - for a 26-20 lead. Over the next few minutes of the second period, it seemed the Poets managed two baskets for every one of the Huskies'.
Dunbar went up 38-28 with 1:29 left before halftime. Fratz hit a 3-pointer 22 seconds later to pull within seven points, but the rest of the game seemed to belong to Dunbar, which led by nine points (42-33) at halftime.
Huskies coach Steve Fratz said Friday night after the team's semifinal win over Mardela that the third quarter has been his team's Achilles heel throughout the season. He was never more accurate - perhaps prophetic - than on Saturday night.
Having had 16 minutes of play to evaluate and experience the Huskies, the Poets used the 10-minute intermission to figure out how to put Northern Garrett away for good. It didn't take long for them to execute their plan. Dunbar opened the third quarter with a 14-1 run - simply dominating the Huskies on the boards on both ends of the court, pursuing loose balls like previous opponents had not and simply having their way with the Huskies inside the paint, where Dunbar scored 46 of their 80 points.
For Northern's part, everything that had gone right against Allegany, Smithsburg and, on Friday, Mardela - well, didn't on Saturday.
"It seemed like nothing was falling," Kaitlynn Fratz said. "Even our foul shots weren't."
The Huskies made 12 of 24 shots from the field in the first half. In the second half, it got much worse, as they shot only 35 percent (7 for 20). They also shot only 58.1 percent from the foul line, including an uncharacteristic 5-for-11 from the charity stripe (45.5 percent) in the first half.
Despite Dunbar's aggressiveness and dominance under the net, the Huskies were down by only nine at halftime.
"We knew they were really going to start trying to pound it in," coach Steve Fratz said. "Wright was banging us around a good bit. I just wanted them to be organized a little bit."
If it was organize chaos, it was because the tandem of Wright and Tayong made it so. And just two minutes into the third quarter, Fratz picked up her fourth foul.
Forty-eight seconds into the fourth, Fratz was tagged for her fifth personal foul for the first time this season. By then, though, Dunbar led 62-44 and even the large home-like pro-Husky crowd had been, to a degree, quieted.
Fratz finished with 22 points and six rebounds. McKenzie tallied 19 points and six rebounds. Brosnihan and Yommer each added five points, Sydney McFarland and Taryn Brenneman had four points apiece and Kiersten Butler finished with three points.
Coach Steve Fratz noted many of the successes of the season, including a school record 23 wins, his daughter Kaitlynn's scoring her 2,000th career point and setting Garrett County's all-time scoring record for boys or girls. In addition, McKenzie moved to second all-time - behind Fratz - on the school's career 3-point shooting list.
"It's been a memorable part of my life that I'll never forget," said Fratz, who is stepping down as coach so he can watch Kaitlynn fulfill her athletic scholarship at University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. "To get here today is icing on the cake."
Northern Garrett assistant coach Pete Brosnihan consoles Huskies senior point guard Kaitlynn Fratz in the final minutes of the team's 80-62 Class 1A state championship loss to Dunbar on Saturday at UMBC. Fratz fouled out early in the fourth quarter.
When I want the ball, I'm gonna go get it.
-- Michelle Wright, Poets junior, who tallied as many rebounds - 21 - as did the entire Northern Garrett team
a PhDispatch.com photo