BLUE BISON DEPTH SHINES THROUGH
After Mayo fouled out, rest of Shaker squad stepped up
GUILDERLAND, N.Y. >> The young, upstart Saratoga Springs girls basketball squad had Shaker right where they wanted them in the Section II Class AA semifinal Monday night at Guilderland High School.
No. 4 seed Saratoga was down by just five points and No. 1 Shaker’s senior West Point Military Academy commit CeCe Mayo fouled out with 4:32 left in the contest.
“We came in with a game plan to help with CeCe, to double and to help, to get stops with her,” Saratoga Springs coach Robin Chudy said. “We got her out of the game, she had five fouls, I thought ‘Here we go!’
“Four and a-half (minutes) later I think we were like ‘What’s going on?’ We stopped boxing out, we stopped getting the boards, we just stopped playing I think.”
While the Blue Bison didn’t have Mayo, they did have junior Shyla Sanford who stepped up against the Blue Streaks late by scoring nine of the final 16 team points. Seven of those came from the free throw line in the 59-46 win.
“My first initial thought was ‘This is last year, semifinals against Shen, CeCe fouls out with five minutes left, it’s a seven-point game at that point,” Shaker head coach Ron Beaudoin said. “This year we talked about the idea of if she is not on the floor, what do we do and how do we overcome it?
“Shyla (Sanford) steps up, we hit foul shots at the end, Lexi Ratigan gets a couple of secondchance opportunities on rebounds off foul shots, Lexi Debeatham the same thing and then we get some stops down in the defensive end. I cannot be more proud of my girls at this point in time. I’m just ecstatic that we’re going on to the next game.”
The Blue Streaks (14-7) trailed throughout the first half of the contest, but tied it up at 28 apiece early in the second half on five
opening points by freshman Dolly Cairns who finished with a game-high 23 points.
Shaker answered with their own seven point run before Saratoga again cut the lead to just a single point, again a bucket from underneath by Cairns with 3:14 left in the third. But the Blue Streaks offense stalled to allow the Blue Bison (20-2) to slowly pull away — despite losing Mayo in the fourth quarter.
“The first time we played them up at their place we won by nine, the second time we played them (a Saratoga win) we didn’t play the greatest ball, but what they did defensively that kind of hurt us,” Beaudoin said.
“They clogged up the lane a lot, got CC out of her game.”
Mayo finished with 12 points, after being forced to change her game based on the Saratoga defensive efforts.
“You cannot drive into three people, she did it the first two possessions, but the next one it was a drive and then a little pull-up, little one handed kind of floater,” Beaudoin said. “We tried in the beginning and we got into the lane and did find a couple of opportunities, we just didn’t make the shots. She just has to learn on the floor she got a couple of double teams and we got the ball through, before we got the couple of layoffs in the end.
Shaker will now face No. 2 Shenendehowa, 6 p.m. Saturday night at the Glens Falls Civic Center.
“I am so hopeful leaving here today because we have 95 percent of these girls back next year, which is fantastic for me,” Chudy said. “They play their hearts out, they have moments when they play spectacular and I think to put that in for an entire game. We’re going to be pretty unstoppable soon.”