AUGUSTA — Gray-New Gloucester’s first gold ball will be remembered largely for Skye Conley taking over the second half and leading the Patriots to their 35-31 Class B state championship win over Houlton.
But before Conley put the Patriots on her back, someone had to give the senior center and her team solid ground to stand on.
Before there was Skye, there was Izzy.
Senior forward Izzy DeTroy rescued the Patriots from an all-too-familiar slow start Friday night. And Conley will be the first to admit if it hadn’t been for one of her co-captains, her own second-half heroics might have been moot, and Gray-New Gloucester wouldn’t have avenged last year’s 48-35 loss to the Shiretowners.
The Patriots didn’t start looking like the Patriots until DeTroy hit three straight jumpers in the first quarter.
They were clearly out of sorts for the first four minutes. Instead of the snappy ball movement that had made basketball purists take notice of them during the B South regional, they were either hesitant to make the right pass or forcing the wrong one.
Trailing 6-0 and having missed their first four shots, the Patriots had the same deer in headlights look coach Mike Andreasen saw in the early stages of last year’s final. He called a couple of time outs to try to settle them down, but it wasn’t until DeTroy scored their first hoop, a baseline jumper, 4:25 into the game that it actually happened.
“Boy, was that big?” Andreasen said. “Once she got us on the board, it was ‘All right, we’re not going to get shut out tonight.'”
“The momentum wasn’t going our way,” DeTroy said. “I’m not the typical shooter on the team. I’ll be the first to admit that. And I think they were guarding our shooters so I had some open shots and I needed to take them.”
DeTroy drilled her second jumper moments later from the wing. Her third shot was virtually a carbon copy of her first — about 15 feet out from the baseline, and pulled the Patriots within 8-6.
“That’s typically where I shoot my shots. That’s where I do feel most comfortable,” she said. “The coaches always say ‘Don’t think about it. If you’re on that baseline, put it up every time.”
“Izzy doesn’t realize how good of a shooter she is,” Andreasen said. “She’s a mid-range shooter. She’s not a 3-point shooter.”
Not only did DeTroy help the Patriots settle in, she triggered a 13-0 run.
“Without her hitting those three shots, I don’t know if we would have been able to get any offensive momentum,” Conley said. “It’s something that takes true leadership. She has great composure and she showed that.”
Sophomore guard Brianna Jordan picked up where DeTroy left off, scoring five of the Patriots’ next seven points. DeTroy returned the favor and took over defending Houlton star guard Kolleen Bouchard for much of the rest of the game.
Giving up four inches in height to the 6-foot junior guard, DeTroy sacrificed bothering her outside shot for keeping her in front and away from the hoop.
“She can shoot the 3. She’s a great player,” DeTroy said. “I tried to keep my hands down and make sure I closed out on her tight and closed out central because that’s where our help is. If she went baseline, that wouldn’t help us in any way.”
Bouchard finished with a game-high 16 points, but on 6 of 17 shooting (1-for-3 on 3-pointers).
“I think Kolleen had tough looks tonight,” Andreasen said. “She made some big shots, but I think we made her work for her points.”
The Gray New Goucester bench erupts after the final basket of the Class B girl’s State Championship at the Augusta Civic Center on Friday night.
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