JOHNSON CITY, NY- After winning the inaugural BCANY Summer Hoops Festival championship back in 2011 it's been nothing but heartbreak and close calls for the Central girls’ team. They have brought some strong groups together to the suburbs of Binghamton for the tournament but have never since been able to get over the hump.
The hump has primarily been the Rochester hump as Central head coach Derek Lyons would admit. Central had lost to Rochester in either the semifinals or title game to Rochester in each of the past three seasons, and on Sunday they would once again see the Section 5 based team in the semifinal round.
It was another close game that was tied with 6 minutes to play, but the Central team dug down and ultimately ended up coming away with a 60-46 victory, with Lyons, the girls high school coach at Fulton H.S., admitting that the win was not only a long time coming, but a big confidence builder heading into the title game against another solid team in Hudson Valley.
"The Rochester win in the semifinals was kind of a relief for all of us," Lyons admitted. "It allowed us to say you know what we can do this, we can win this tournament. The confidence started for us at the beginning of the tournament of Friday, then Saturday we started building and building and building, and then the Rochester win right there allowed us to really see that this is ours now to win."
They weren't overconfident going into the championship tilt against Hudson Valley but the players and coaches going in knew and believed that if they played their game that it would take a very big effort to knock them off and keep them from taking home the crown.
Central was a deep and well balanced team as well with a half dozen of the team holding Division 1 offers, with another 2-3 surely to earn D1 schools in the years to come. Combine that with the fact that the Hudson Valley team was going to be shorthanded going into the title game and all signs were pointing to a Section 3 team victory.
Grace Thybulle (Irvington '21) and Tanasha Mills (Albertus Magnus '20), two of Hudson Valley's three leading scorers throughout the tournament were out for the final because of some minor injuries they occurred in Sunday's mornings semifinal win over Suffolk, meaning not only would they be losing their lone real big player of size in Thybulle, but a major scoring weapon from the outside would be gone in Mills giving Central an even bigger edge before the game began.
As the game started it was clear to see the Central teams game plan was to dump the ball into the post to big 6'2" forward Jessica Cook (Cicero-North Syracuse '21) as with Thybulle out there was no one on the Hudson Valley roster over 5'10" making her a mismatch that Lyons knew he wanted to take advantage of.
"We were like we have to get Jessica the ball," Lyons said with a laugh. "Our goal was to get it inside and we felt if we got the ball inside enough it would open up our shooters to make shots as well."
That's exactly how it went as Cook had 16 points in the opening half, while both Lexie Roe (Fayetteville-Manlius '21) and Kaia Henderson (New Hartford '22) each would connect from the outside well, but credit to the Hudson Valley team as they didn't make things easy for Central. Paulina Paris (Albertus Magnus '22) scored 13 in the first half, while Paris, Anna Eng (Croton-Harmon '21) and Sierra Linnin (Albertus Magnus '22) combined for 6 opening half three balls to actually give the Section 1 team a 31-30 lead going into halftime.
While not the expectation for how the result would play out in the first half, Lyons said he remained confident with his team as he knew that playing with just 6 players, and missing two key pieces would more than likely mean Hudson Valley would wear a down a bit as the game wore on believing that if his group continued to stick to the game plan of working the ball inside that it would pay off in the end.
Lyons words and beliefs proved to be true as Henderson and Gabby Stickle (Jamesville-DeWitt '20) each were major offensive facilitators finding Cook and Amarah Streiff (Bishop Ludden '23) inside as Cook added 8 more in the second half to finish off the game with a game high 24 points, while Streiff had 11 of her 14 in the second half giving Central a pair of posts who instilled their will onto the game late.
From the start it was Hudson Valley living by the three ball, and while they started strong from the outside that didn't last as they only hit on two triples in the second half as their 1 point halftime lead was vanquished quickly, and with 9 minutes left in the game they went down double digits for the first time after a Henderson three for Central, with the lead for them only continuing to grow from there.
There just wasn't much that the Hudson Valley team could do as they were short on healthy bodies and couldn't find a plan to stop the Central trio of Cook, Henderson, and Strieff with the three of them scoring 52, just one point short of the entire Hudson Valley team put together. Hudson Valley did put up a great fight for a half and change but the depth and the talent from top to bottom of the Central group ended up winning out as for the first time since 2011 it was the girls from Section 3 who would take the title, defeating a solid and game Hudson Valley team for the crown, 73-53.
After going 8 years since their last BCANY Summer Hoops Festival win it was finally sweet success for the Central girls. More could be coming as well for the Central team as on Stickle will graduate next spring meaning that 9 of the 10 Central players could theoretically come back and play again in the tournament again come next August, a thought that has already crossed Lyons mind saying that while one is good, going back to back would be even better.
"Gabby would be a huge loss and that would hurt us but if all these kids decide they want to come back and do this again then that would be great," Lyons said. "I definitely think we could be pretty dangerous team again next year."
