Raiders a basket short against Peddie
By: Justin Feil
When the Hun School girls’ basketball played The Peddie School for the Mid-Atlantic Prep League title, the Raiders got caught up in a fast-paced approach in a 23-point loss.
Just four days later, the two teams met to decide the Prep A state championship, and this time Hun stayed right with Peddie from start to finish before falling to the 11-time repeat champions, 58-56, Thursday.
"We knew what the mistakes were that we did Sunday," said Hun head coach Bill Holup. "We were rushing in second half whenever we broke press. We felt we had to fire up the first shot. We weren’t making those shots. We didn’t have a halfcourt offense on that Sunday in the MAPL.
"It was good to play another game before playing Peddie again. Pennington is a solid team with 20 wins. It helped us prepare even more (to win in the Prep A semifinal last Tuesday). It was a matter of us slowing things down once we broke the press. If we had a layup, we were going to take it. We didn’t take jump shots in transition. We learned from that."
Morgan Cawley led the Raiders with 16 points. It was a season-high for the junior forward who has come on strong at the end of the season.
"Last year at the end of the season, she started also," Holup said. "She’s someone that has an ability to help out and score. She has a good shot. She’s someone a lot of teams don’t concentrate on. She shows them you have to guard her."
Cawley made the most of the Falcons paying plenty of attention to Emily Gratch. Gratch still finished with 10 points despite fighting off an illness earlier in the day.
"She played well," Holup said. "The first half, she didn’t score at all and we were up by two. Everyone else was stepping up. She was sick and hospitalized and managed to play. There was no way she was going to miss that game."
The Raiders held leads after the first and second quarters and trailed by just one at the close of the third quarter. It was just a one-point game in the MAPL final as well, but there was a different pace to Thursday’s state final.
"The other thing we didn’t do was press this game," Holup said. "Sunday we did press them and it added to the recklessness of the game. When teams are pressing each other, you get into that run-and-gun atmosphere. Until the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, we didn’t press. Peddie pressed us. We had no problem with it. They had to pull it off eventually after we were getting layups."
In the fourth quarter, Peddie built a nine-point lead with 1:40 to play in the game. The Raiders, however, chipped away as Peddie missed several free throws. When Gratch hit two free throws with 15 seconds to play, Hun trailed, 57-56. After a free throw by Peddie, Hun could not connect on a last-second shot.
"It was a tremendous basketball game," Holup said. "If you were a fan just there to watch a good basketball game, it was a perfect game."
The game marked the third loss of the season to Peddie for Hun. The Raiders, though, put together another outstanding season. They ended their season with a 23-6 record. From the team, Hun loses three seniors Karly Grace who will play at Brown University, Ali Tartacoff who will play at the Naval Academy and multi-sport athlete Carol Ann Michel.
"We’re losing our two main ball handlers and main three-point shooters," Holup said. "And Carol Ann was a four-year player and gave a lot to the program. Her size helped us out and she had a tremendous attitude. These people will be hard to replace, not just as players but because they’re good people. And we have a good nucleus coming back."

