AUGUSTA – Sure, there were times scattered throughout Saturday’s Western Class C girls’ basketball championship when a visitor from another planet wouldn’t have been able to distinguish soon-to-be-11-time defending champion Dirigo from hoping-to-win-one-again-someday Hall-Dale.
Leave it to the red-and-black-shirted Bulldogs’ student cheering section to give it away.
Less than two minutes remained in the third quarter when Heather St. Pierre picked Dirigo’s pocket and pushed the ball to six-foot junior forward Caitlyn Laflin for an easy bucket.
You can’t stop her, the Bulldog Backers bellowed in the rhythmic cheering pattern that Duke University’s Cameron Crazies made famous.
Dirigo’s infinitely more experienced bleacher creatures didn’t deliver the satisfaction of a response. Easy, when you’re accustomed to letting the crooked numbers on the scoreboard speak volumes.
It’s fun to imagine the possibilities, though.
You have four points. Or maybe, single digits.
Two-zero-four was Laflin’s line at the time, roughly one-fifth her season’s average.
How about, Still got three fouls.
Actually, within the first two minutes of the fourth quarter, Laflin and 6-1 classmate Chelsey Dionne each picked up their fourth personal.
Dirigo’s defense was oft-maligned during a sleepy December and January, but the Cougars delivered the goods once again when confronted by the consensus second-best team in the Mountain Valley Conference.
The Cougars played their customary me-and-my-shadow brand of man-to-man defense, exasperated Hall-Dale’s two marquee performers early and often and hammered out their third relatively one-sided win over the Bulldogs this winter, 43-32.
“I don’t know if we have more confidence than they do,” junior center Holly Knight said with sportsmanlike hesitation. Then she added, “But we have beaten them before.”
Every year, an MVC rival sets up shop on the other side of the tournament bracket and believes this is the year The Streak evaporates into the Augusta Civic Center’s open air.
Put the Cougars in this environment, though, and the defensive killer instinct takes over. Dirigo essentially says, we’re going to play you straight-up, and our athletes are going to stop your athletes.
“It took a little bit longer this year,” Dirigo coach Gavin Kane said of his team’s confidence without basketball in hand. “We still continued to play fairly solid man-to-man defense, but we have not trapped as well with this team as we have in the past.”
Michelle Holmquist (seven defensive rebounds, three steals, one block) did masterful work limiting Laflin’s breathing space. Dionne never found much freedom from Knight, either.
And it was two-time MVC Player of the Year and two-time tournament MVP Alexa Kaubris who exhibited some of her soccer skills and made like a sweeper, shuffling over to help Holmquist or Knight double-team either of Hall-Dale’s prolific scorers.
“We just tried to force (Laflin) to make the shot,” Holmquist said. “Play straight-up defense, make her make the shot and try not to foul. Just make her get there and make her make it herself.”
Laflin scored six of her 10 points in the fourth quarter. Dionne led the Bulldogs with 14, but she wasn’t much of a factor after fashioning four hoops in the first nine minutes.
“They’re great players,” said Knight, “but we really work on sandwiching them.”
And there’s the difference.
Other teams shy away from Hall-Dale’s height. Dirigo attacks.
“Our focus with the team defense was just to make sure we were in good help-side position and try to take away any lobs in there,” Kane said. “I thought we did a very, very nice job, both on Dionne, and Michelle Holmquist played a great game defensively on Caitlyn.”
Dirigo limited Hall-Dale to 32 points, a number that’s actually smaller than the Cougars’ mind-blowing streak of 33 regional tournament victories.
Explains why they don’t celebrate little, ol’ breakaway lay-ups, doesn’t it?
“It’s always fun to play in these high-intensity games,” Holmquist said. “It’s fun to play in Augusta.”
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