Portsmouth girls basketball finds way to hand Salem first loss

PORTSMOUTH – Ricky Oliver was thrilled with how his young Salem High School girls basketball team opened the season 4-0, but he knew his team was in for an awakening when the Blue Devils traveled to play against his friend and Portsmouth coach Tim Hopley’s experienced group.

The recipe that Oliver feared was cooked to perfection by the Clippers.

Salem led 11-8 through the first quarter, but the Clippers took control by suffocating the Blue Devils defensively in the second on their way to a 54-32 Division I victory inside Stone Gymnasium on Friday night.

Portsmouth senior Avery Romps scored a game-high 17 points while classmate Margaret Montplaisir added 15.

“We’re really good friends and I was telling (Hopley) last night that I think you’re a final four team and you’re probably going to play Pinkerton in the finals,” Oliver said. “I’ve got to keep it real. My kids are young, I’m not graduating anybody, we played hard.

"When you play against an older team that is more seasoned and they’re hungry, you’re going to have that outcome.”

Portsmouth (3-1) will get a chance to preview Oliver’s championship-game prediction when the Clippers travel to Pinkerton Academy (4-0) on Tuesday. The Clippers have reached three straight Division I semifinals, having lost to Bedford each time.

“For the most part, I thought we played well,” Hopley said. “We’re struggling to finish a little bit, we struggled finishing in the first quarter and they were good looks. It took a while to knock some stuff down and once we did, it gave us a chance to breathe a little bit. I thought defensively we were really tough.”

The Clippers slapped on a full-court press to begin the second to force a number of turnovers and commence Salem’s demise. Romps drained a 3-pointer to give Portsmouth its first-double digit lead and she concluded a 20-5 quarter for the Clippers with a layup to give Portsmouth a 28-16 halftime lead.

“We try to put a lot of ball pressure at the top on the point guards, which I think helped, it got them flustered and they turned the ball over a little bit and they’re a big 3-point shooting team so we tried to close out on that,” Romps said. “We tried to stay composed on the offensive end, attacked instead of settling for 3s and I think it worked out at the end.”

Portsmouth continued its dominance in the third quarter and carried a 44-22 lead into the fourth.

“We came in knowing they were a really competitive, high-energy team so we knew we had to come out beating their energy playing composed and smart,” Montplaisir said. “We played together and we have great chemistry. We were really slow at the start, but we got that out of the way.”

In Romps and Montplaisir, Hopley has a senior duo that has started since they were freshmen and will both be playing collegiately next year. Montplaisir heads to Division III St. Michael’s College (Colchester, Vt.), while Romps will play at St. Anselms. Mackenzie Lombardi and Maddie MacCannell are the other senior starters for Portsmouth.

“They’re still progressing, there are still things that they’re doing on a daily basis that they’re trying to get better at day in and day out,” Hopley said. “They haven’t touched that ceiling yet. It’s there.”

Now Portsmouth gets a chance to play another undefeated team in Pinkerton on Tuesday. The Clippers only loss, 64-62, came at the hands of Londonderry (5-0).

“I think losing to Londonderry a few weeks ago kind of brought our motivation a bit higher,” Romps said. “We have a lot of drive to beat teams and prove ourselves to the rest of the state.”