Pinkerton girls basketball finds way to get past Windham

WINDHAM - The Pinkerton Academy girls basketball team has been learning lessons all season long.

Against Windham on Friday night, the Astros learned how to play shorthanded.

Down two starters - one to injury, one to foul trouble - for a long stretch in the first half, Pinkerton created some separation going into halftime and pulled away in the fourth quarter for a 55-30 win over the Jaguars in a Division I game.

Elizabeth Lavoie led the Astros (13-0 in D1) with 26 points, despite sitting for more than six minutes in the first half with two fouls. Brooke Benz added 10 points and Kailey Dupuis added eight, as Pinkerton was without junior point guard Sydney Gerossie due to an injury suffered in Tuesday's win over Manchester Central-West.

"What you saw in the first half was figuring out how to live without Syd," Pinkerton coach Lani Buskey said. "I think we tried to overcompensate. I don’t think my girls had the confidence that they should have had, so you saw chaos. You saw the press get the better of us. I thought once we talked at halftime, I begged them to have some confidence, and I thought you saw a better team in the second half."

Windham's defense caused problems for everyone but Lavoie in the first half, as the senior scored 15 of her team's 19 points to open the game. But after picking up her second foul with 6:12 to go in the first half, Lavoie went to the bench.

While points were still tough to come by, the Astros' defense was able to hold the Jaguars (8-4) to just three points in the quarter, including none in the final five-plus minutes.

"We were right in there," Windham coach Cassie Turcotte said. "Our defensive end is our strong suit, we play with full effort, and you can tell. The kids are on the floor, they’re not afraid to hit the floor, they’re going after the loose ball. The side of the floor that hurts us is our offensive end. We scored a single-digit quarter in two quarters."

Avery Steffanides led Windham with eight points, all in the first half, while Meghan Husson added seven and Paige Carboni had six. The Jaguars were just 5 of 15 at the free throw line and hit three 3-pointers, with Steffanides getting two.

Pinkerton took an early lead but Windham was right there, frustrating the Astros with its aggressive zone defense. The lead changed hands five times through the first nine minutes and the score was tied three times.

"It was a little more extended than I’d had my girls practice for, and I actually started to run a man-offense against it, which got them moving," Buskey said. "The girls were just kind of frozen in the zone offense. You have to rebound because they are just so long. We did not rebound in the first half."

As the half moved along, and Windham was still within striking distance, the Jaguars became a little too aware of the situation, their coach thought.

"I think that our team went out with such heart," Turcotte said. "You step on the court against a team like Pinkerton and your whole mindset changes. There wasn’t really an expectation of winning, which relieves us of some pressure, but it allows us to just focus on playing our best game.

"We started confident and calm and just playing basketball. It wasn’t until we started staying with them for a while, Lavoie was off the floor, all of a sudden, in our heads we go ‘we can actually compete with this team.’ Then they started getting a little disorganized."

That opened the door for Pinkerton to take a 24-17 lead into halftime, but with just over three minutes left in the third quarter, it was still a five-point game.

The Astros went on a 9-2 run to take a 12-point lead in the final minute of the third, but a 3-pointer by Husson cut the Pinkerton lead to 37-28 going into the fourth.

A basket by Lavoie to open the final quarter, followed by 3s from Dupuis and Alexandria White (seven points), helped the Astros go on a 12-0 run to start the fourth.

"In the second half, you gelled and got a 25-point win," Buskey said. "I hope that builds confidence. Players are going to go down, you’re going to lose players, so I think this is at least something to put in our tool box."

Pinkerton outscored Windham 18-2 in the fourth quarter, the second game in row the Jaguars have been outscored by that count to end a game following Tuesday's 60-43 loss to Portsmouth.

"Our overall game is not bad," Turcotte said. "We’ve got to find the basket on one side. Everything is fixable because we come to the court with the effort, with the athleticism. We’re intelligent players, we’ve just got to finish on the offensive end."