OA Girls' Basketball Falls to Scituate in Division 2 South Semis

After trailing by 12 points at halftime of the Division 2 South Sectional Semi-Final game at Massasoit Community College Tuesday, the girls’ basketball team went on a third quarter run and would seemingly go into the fourth quarter tied at 44-44 against Scituate, thanks to the efforts of Senior guard Nicole Bostic and Junior forward Caitlyn Abela.

But, with one second remaining in the third quarter, Scituate came away with the biggest bucket of the game.

With Scituate's Kelly Martin on the inbound pass, the sophomore guard heaved the ball nearly the length of the court to junior Shannon Brady. From there, Brady hit the clutch shot for two of her 22 points as Scituate regained the lead at 46-44 after dominating play for most of the contest. Scituate never looked back, and won the contest 65-55, ending the season for the Oliver Ames girls' basketball team.

After the game, Scituate coach Brian Buckley said he drew that play up recently during practice.

“We ran that play at the end of the third quarter, which we didn’t practice until yesterday, and I said ‘we are going to get an opportunity to use this,” Buckley said. “Never in the world did I think we would score on that and that proved to be the biggest play of the game.”

“That broke our back,” said OA head coach Elaine Clement-Holbrook. “We had come back to tie the game and that shot kind of took the momentum back in their favor.”

In the first half, OA was unable to solve Scituate’s defense and the Sailors were able to use the transition game to their advantage.

“They had their focus on getting back on D and Scituate outran us in the first half,” Clement-Holbrook said. “We gave them some easy baskets in terms of their lay-ups and it took us a little while to get our legs from underneath us.”

At the start of the second half, Scituate went to a man-to-man defense and OA was finally able to use its transition game behind Bostic’s 10 points in the third quarter.

But after the huge shot to end the third quarter, Scituate went back to the transition game and got some clutch shooting from Brady, Martin (14 points) and Megan Otto (16 points) in the final eight minutes.

“We moved the ball a little better and made some foul shots in the fourth quarter,” Buckley said.

“We knew that they were going to be really fast and we knew they were able to run the floor,” said Clement-Holbrook while giving credit to Scituate on the victory. “They have three legitimate players in Martin, Otto and Brady. It makes it more difficult and it makes it harder to help and they spread the floor really well.”

Scituate advances to the South sectional finals this Saturday at UMass-Boston where they’ll face either Bishop Feehan or Hopkinton.

OA finishes its season at 18-5 a year after Clement-Holbrook captured her second state championship.

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