Depth, experience key for Pinkerton girls basketball in win over Londonderry

LONDONDERRY - More often than not, teams have to go through all of the lessons during a season to reach their potential.

For the Pinkerton Academy girls basketball team, a lot of those lessons came a year ago, and it shows.

With the Astros facing their biggest rival in its gym, they came out unphased, withstood a rough stretch, and had the legs at the end to complete a 74-48 win over Londonderry in a Division I contest on Friday.

Pinkerton led by 10 after the first quarter, but the Lancers made it a three-point game with just over three minutes remaining in the second quarter. From there, the Astros outscored Londonderry 21-7 over the next six-plus minutes of game time to take a 17-point lead midway through the third quarter.

That included a 10-1 run to start the second half from which the Lancers were unable to recover.

"I have the exact team back from last year, so we went through the trials and tribulations last year to grow into the team we are now," Pinkerton coach Lani Buskey said. "(Londonderry) cut it within (three points) and there was a moment where I should call a timeout, and I was like no, I’m going to let them respond. Then we went on a run and got it back up to like eight or nine. The girls respond and know what to do."

Brooke Benz scored 13 of her game-high 21 points in the second half and grabbed 10 rebounds for the Astros (9-0), while Sydney Gerossie had 17 points, eight assists and six rebounds and Alexandria White also had 17 markers to go with 16 rebounds and four blocks.

Reagan Anderson and Sam Sullivan each had 14 points to lead the Lancers (6-1) while Brooke Eacrett added 13 points.

"We’ve had a lot of success up to this point in the season, and we’ve kind of been able to roll over certain teams," Londonderry coach Jon Doherty said. "What I’ve been preaching to these kids is, when we play those teams, it’s practice for games like (Friday). I don’t think they understood what I meant until this game ended.

"There’s a lot of growing and mentality building that has to happen for us to be successful. We’ll get there, but this was definitely a very humbling experience. That’s the first thing they said in the locker room."

Pinkerton jumped out to a 6-0 lead early, and although Londonderry got going midway through the first quarter, a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Emily Leonard put the Astros up 18-8 at the end of one.

The lead got to 22-11 for Pinkerton when the Lancers started to chip away, closing to within three points on back-to-back 3-pointers from Mia Giampa and Eacrett to make it 26-23 Astros with 3:12 left in the quarter.

But moments after Eacrett's 3, Gerossie answered with one of her own and Elizabeth Lavoie followed up with a three-point play. Kaylee Dupuis added a basket after that, and in just over a minute, Pinkerton pushed the lead back to 11 points.

A 3 by Sullivan just before the buzzer got Londonderry within single digits, but it was still a 37-29 halftime lead for the Astros. The run to start the third quarter made it 47-30 and the Lancers never got closer than 13 points the rest of the way.

"We go on a little bit of a splurge right before the half and then we go off that," Buskey said. "We were giving in a little bit to their chaos. We have the veteran, longer, deeper team, we have to take advantage of it. If we run the sets, we get kids who are already in foul trouble for Londonderry into more foul trouble and that’s what happened."