By Todd Bradley, DCSportsFan.com
MaxPreps.com
The ISL finals were played Sunday afternoon in Northwest D.C., and the top seed in both divisions both rallied from behind to win. Georgetown Visitation completed a perfect run through ISL AA play, defeating Flint Hill 52-44 while Georgetown Day School (GDS) avenged a Feb. 2 loss to Sidwell with a 57-53 victory over the Quakers. Darien Bridgers bounced back from a slow start and scored 22 points for GDS.
"It feels really good," Bridgers said. "I think I was really off during the first half, so it was just about coming back and helping my team out. We really wanted this, and I think we deserved it."
Sidwell (19-8) jumped out to a double-digit lead in the second quarter as William & Mary commit Taylor Hilton scored 14 first-half points for the Quakers. Georgetown Day (18-2), however, began to double and triple team Hilton, which threw Sidwell off its game and opened the door for a GDS comeback. Bridgers scored six unanswered points in the final 20 seconds of the first half to cut Sidwell's lead to seven points going into the break.
"We knew that Sidwell is a very good team, so it wasn't going to be easy," Bridgers added. "We said that if we get down, we have to bring each other up."
And that's what the Mighty Hoppers did. In addition to Bridgers’ performance, Moni Fabunmi (13 points), Lucy Cooper (10 points), Sally Marx (8 points) and Adjua Pryor (3 points) stepped up in the second half. Pryor put GDS ahead for good and Marx stole the ball with less than five seconds to play to seal the victory.
"We really didn't want to lose," Marx said. "We lost to them last time, which was like a dagger to our heart, so we didn't want to do it again."
Pryor, who is just a sophomore, had to get past her own nerves and scored three of the game's most important points late in the contest.
"I get just as nervous as everyone else on the team," Pryor said. "It just came down to that it was the time to play. Those baskets really counted, and I had to do it for the team."
As for Georgetown Visitation (27-4), the Cubs went 14-0 against ISL AA opponents during the regular season, including two victories over Flint Hill, which put some hefty expectations on the team heading into tournament play.
"For me, it's almost more of a relief," Georgetown Visitation coach Mike McCarthy said. "We were the team to beat all year. I told the girls to win the tournament and validate what we've done all year. A couple freshmen really stepped up big this year."
One of those freshmen was Maddy Williams, who led the Cubs with 12 points, including two 3-pointers in the fourth quarter to fight off a rallying Flint Hill team. The Huskies, led by Logan Frederick (12 points), had cut the lead to five points before Williams stepped up. In the end, though, the depth of Visitation proved to be too great. In addition to Williams' performance, Nicole Krusen (10 points), Kate Gillespie (8 points), Kristen Haley (8 points), Bridget Coakley (4 points), Nina Swanson (4 points) and Kelsey Tillman (3 points) all contributed for Visitation, who are the early favorites for the 2009-10 season.
"We return our top seven or eight players," McCarthy added. "These girls have played a lot of basketball so they're older than they seem. We have a great group coming back."
