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Defense sends North Andover to quarters

Thursday, March, 03 By Jeff Hamrick

NORTH ANDOVER — Winning with flair isn’t a requirement at this stage of the season when advancing is the only concern on a team or coach’s mind.

Which is a good thing for the North Andover girls.

The Scarlet Knights were not pretty last night, but they did more than enough in a 32-16 victory over visiting Tewksbury to move on to the Division 2 quarterfinals for the third consecutive year. The second-seeded Knights will play host to No. 10 Wilmington at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. North Andover (17-4) has defeated Wilmington (12-9) twice in the regular season by 17 and 10 points.

But if it hopes on playing beyond Sunday, North Andover will need to play better than they did against the 16th-seeded Redmen. The Knights scored only two points — a pair of free throws by Morgan Lumb with 15.2 seconds left — in the fourth quarter. In the period, the Knights missed all eight of their field-goal attempts.
And they still won.

“I never would’ve believed that, of course,” North Andover coach Sue Breen said. “We were just off the whole game. Like, there were weird passes. But even in the fourth quarter we had some nice looks. They just didn’t go in.

“Maybe we just had the jitters ... But you have to be able to find a way to win even when it’s not your best day. And there was no kid on my team where it was their best day. It’s great to be moving on, and I’m just glad we’re still alive.”

Despite being held to its season low — eclipsing the previous low of 38 in a victory over Pentucket — North Andover never trailed. The Knights broke a 5-5 tie when Amanda Foote made a free throw with 43 seconds left in the first. It was the start of a 12-0 run that provided a 17-5 advantage with 5:36 left in the second quarter.

The Knights were playing a team that had been held to 29 points or fewer five times during the regular season. And the Redmen weren’t able to find a spark last night. Tewksbury had two more turnovers (34) than field-goal attempts (32). With only six field goals on the night, the Redmen shot 18.8 percent from the field.

“Coach Breen does an excellent job on the defensive side of the game,” Tewksbury coach Mark Bradley said. “She’s a good man-to-man coach. We spent a lot of time trying to develop things and they forced us out of our sets and then we were sort of guessing what we should do.”

North Andover had 13 steals in the first half, and Foote finished with five while Lumb had four.

“I think Morgan Lumb and Amanda Foote and Pam Coufos all three of them just really put pressure on the ball on defense,” Breen said. “Our defense, obviously is very solid, but it was just an ugly game.”