Vikes can’t survive Tigers’ second run

By: Rich Fisher
   At the end of the second quarter in Monday’s Greater Middlesex Conference girls’ basketball quarterfinal, South Brunswick was furiously climbing a rope to try and emerge from a deep hole it had dug.
   The Vikings were nearly out as the half ended.
   But when the second half started, South Plainfield walked over to the hole, snipped the rope and the Vikings went plummeting downward once more. This time, the Tigers destroyed the escape vine permanently.
   The result was a disappointing 64-40 loss by the sixth-seeded Vikes at the hands of the third-seeded Tigers, who also won by 20 points at the end of the regular season. But in that game, South Brunswick held back many of the things it did, in anticipation of meeting the Tigers again.
   "We had a lot more to give than we had shown that initial time we played them," coach Beth Barrio said. "We had just played a zone because we were hoping to see them in the GMC’s. But we had trouble scoring (thanks to 27 turnovers), and once you have a little trouble scoring, you can’t press. We had a couple presses we wanted to throw at them that we didn’t get to execute as much as we’d like. And we started to get into foul trouble so, we struggled to stay in the man defense. We tried to fall back in a diamond and one, they were stalling a little bit so we had to come out of that.
   "Once they saw the adjustments we were making, they countered them. It kind of forced us into playing in a man, trying to press off a miss and trying to double the ball. It’s really tough to do that in general, never mind if you don’t have that two seconds when the ball’s out of bounds. I think we did what we could and the girls tried to do what we could, and we were kind of stuck in the corner."
   Offensively, South Brunswick also seemed stuck.
   "They had a lot of opportunities to do some different things and they didn’t take those opportunities," Barrio said. "They had plays to run they didn’t execute, press breakers they didn’t run, offensive plays where’d they’d be able to screen for Jordan (Confessore), who was being isolated one-on-one. But they weren’t setting screens on the right people, they weren’t running the right plays. They really had more opportunities than they took advantage of."
   It was the Tigers taking advantage, as they rolled to leads of 18-6 and 27-12. The Vikes seemed buried, but finally stopped turning the ball over and managed a 13-2 run to end the first half. That brought them within 29-25 at halftime, and South Brunswick hoped to carry that momentum into the third quarter.
   But SBHS turned it over four of their first five possessions, helping South Plainfield to a 19-2 run that opened a 48-27 lead. This time, there would be no comeback.
   "The third quarter," guard Janay Barnett said sadly, shaking her head. "We came in at halftime fired up, we came back out and they went on a spurt and we just mentally collapsed from there. We knew they were gonna go on a spurt, it happens in basketball. But as a whole, we were just not all together."
   "South Plainfield came out in the third quarter and they were very motivated," Barrio said. "That second quarter motivated them to play harder and we came out a little complacent. They weren’t exactly ready for it. And then it’s a domino effect. They’d start to transition and run and we’d make a couple bad passes and get a couple fouls and it seems like all the snow is falling on your head at once."
   And this time, it buried the Vikes for good.
   BUZZER BEATERS: Jordan Confessore led the Vikes with 15 points, all in the first half. She had 12 in the second quarter. Ashley Wandishin added 11 . . . South opened GMC play with a 49-44 win over Edison as Confessore had 19, Susie Miller had 16 and Wandishin had 11 . . . The 9th-seeded Vikes now turn their attention to the NJSIAA Group IV tournament, where they will visit 8th-seeded Jackson (Barrio’s alma mater) in a first-round game Monday. Jackson is coached by Rachel Goodale, a 1,000-point scorer and teammate of Barrio’s at Jackson. "I haven’t been back in 12 years or so. It will be nice to go there and be in that atmosphere," the coach said. "They have a strong 3-point shooter and a very strong post player, so Susie will have her hands full and so will the guards up top. I’m hoping we can transition on them, throw a couple things on them they haven’t seen from scouting us."