Wildcats fall in semis to end hard-fought girls basketball season
After winning League VI and notching 18 wins, the Shoreham-Wading River girls basketball team’s season came to an end in the Suffolk County Class A semifinals against a team that dealt them one of their only losses during the regular season. In a back-and-forth match, the Wildcats lost 46-40 against No. 4 Islip Monday night at Centereach High School. It was a tough way to end the season after earning the No. 1 seed in the tourney.
The momentum was all Shoreham-Wading River from the opening tip, as Grayce Kitchen connected on three triples in the first quarter – the last of which hit every part of the rim before falling in as the buzzer sounded. The Wildcats were hitting their shots and kept Islip off the board to the tune of a 14-8 lead heading into the second quarter.
But that’s when things changed. Islip’s Riley Moran, who averaged 10.5 points per game this season, started to erupt. Everything that left her fingertips, from any part of the court, ripped through the net. Moran simply put her team on her back, scoring 29 of Islip’s 46 points.
“Moran is a great player,” SWR head coach Adam Lievre said. “As far as I know, that’s the best game she’s ever had. Have to give her credit. She made big shot after big shot.”
The 29 points was a career-high — and she picked a great time to do it.
Lievre made some defensive changes going into the third quarter and SWR held Islip scoreless for the first five minutes of the second half. The Buccaneers scored only five points the whole quarter. SWR was coming up with steals left and right but unfortunately, the turnovers weren’t turning into many points, as the Wildcats scored just nine, preventing them from pulling away.
“I think us going into a shooting rut in the third quarter was the difference maker in the game,” Lievre said. “We missed a bunch of easy ones that I felt like we should have had. We went cold from three-point range and not scoring more when we had the opportunity hurt our confidence and it carried into the fourth quarter.”
But even with Moran’s lights out shooting , SWR fought back and took a five point lead in the final frame thanks to Alyssa Bell and Kady Keegan who scored 11 and nine points, respectively. Kitchen hit a trey in that fourth quarter as well to finish with a team-high 15 points.
In the final minutes of the game, the Wildcats went ice cold. Behind Moran, Islip went on an 11-0 run to end the game and send them into the Suffolk County Class A final against No. 2 Mt. Sinai.
“Tough to win big games when you go minutes without scoring,” Lievre said. “When you miss easy shots it kind of piles up. When we needed big shots, we didn’t hit them. They did. That was the difference.”
Lievre has been mulling retirement for the past few seasons, but now the only coach in school history to bring home a girls basketball Suffolk County championship has officially called it quits. He undoubtedly left his mark on the program.
“We went 18-3 this year. We were the league champions. It was an awesome season,” said Lievre, who plans to spend more time watching his sons play basketball. “It hurts to lose the last one but there’s a bigger picture in all of this, like all the memories we created this season. Yeah, this stings, but the fun times we had is something you can always look back on. This was a great group. I’ll definitely miss them.”
