Once again, it didn’t come easy.
The top-seeded St. Joseph girls basketball team added another notch to its impressive belt on March 4, defeating No. 2 Cristo Rey 57-45 to clinch the Brooklyn-Queens Catholic High School Athletic Association ‘B’ championship.
The Lady Cougars needed a late-game push to get the victory, but the squad was all smiles as they walked off the court after winning a title in the program’s very first season.
“We worked hard all season and I told them that Cristo Rey was going to come to play,” said St. Joseph coach Mike Toro. “It’s a championship. So it didn’t matter if we were beating everybody by a lot in the regular season, anything can happen.”
St. Joseph jumped out to a 10-point lead late in the first quarter, but couldn’t maintain control as Cristo Rey refused to go down without a fight.
The Lady Panthers answered St. Joseph’s run with one of their own, grabbing a five-point cushion with 4:14 left in the first half. The Lady Cougars managed to tie the game by halftime, but the squad was far from satisfied with its early performance.
“At the start of the game we came out with the energy like we wanted to win the championship,” Toro said. “I told them at halftime, “Right now you’ve given them the opportunity to feel like they can win this game, so you need to start this third quarter and give them some type of doubt.’ They did that.”
The game was a back-and-forth affair for much of the third quarter. St. Joseph struggled on the boards, unable to get more than one look at the basket.
Raven Pitt changed things in the waning seconds of the quarter, grabbing her own rebound — three times — and sinking a bucket with 3.1 ticks on the clock. The basket gave St. Joseph a lead it would never relinquish.
“It was a bit nerve-wracking, but I think we handled it well and just stayed calm under pressure,” Pitt said. “We just had to stick together and keep going.”
St. Joseph opened the fourth quarter with a seven-point run, effectively grabbing the momentum and wrapping up the victory. The team drained its free throws down the stretch and Cristo Rey couldn’t recover.
It was an emotional victory for the Lady Cougars, which played its home games at St. Francis College this season. Going forward, the team has its sights set on a state championship, and considers the latest victory the first step on that road.
“To me, all along, my goal was the state championship,” Toro said. “So this is sweet and it feels great. I feel like I’ve got a monkey off my back, but there’s still more accomplish.
