Coming into Tuesday night’s game, Coe-Brown girls’ basketball coach Joe Vachon knew his team would be depleted, with recent illness and injury going around his roster. In the first half, the Bears battled and carried a 23-14 lead into halftime.
But in the second half, Merrimack Valley (1-1) stormed back, outscoring Coe-Brown (0-2), 37-14, for the Pride’s first win of the season, 51-37.
Here were three of the keys to MV’s comeback on the road:
The Pride’s adjustment to Coe-Brown’s 1-3-1 zone: The Bears played most of the first half in a 1-3-1 zone that seemed to flummox the Pride offensively. MV wasn’t able to knock down shots and similarly struggled around the rim.
Vachon’s wrinkle certainly worked, holding the Pride to just the 14 points in the first half.
“We worked on it most of our practices, and it’s something we’re gonna do this season,” he said. “We have some aggressive girls, they like it, they buy into it.”
He added that because his team has struggled to score in clear five-on-five situations, the zone allows them to increase their chances of getting easier buckets in transition off of turnovers.
But it didn’t have the same effect in the second half. MV head coach Bob McNutt said the 1-3-1 caught him off-guard, and the Pride weren’t really able to make the necessary adjustments until halftime. The adjustments they did make worked.
“We worked on a little baseline runner and learning to skip the pass over the top,” McNutt said. “And I told ’em, ‘Just win the third quarter, and once we take the lead, I feel like we’ll run with it.’ ”
The Pride outscored the Bears 15-4 in the third and never looked back.
MV got big offensive contributions from several players: After a sluggish first half, seniors Emily Kelly and Hadleigh Sargent came alive offensively for the Pride.
Kelly had 12 points on four 3-pointers in the second half, including three in the fourth quarter. Sargent also stepped up, with 10 second-half points. She finished the game with 13 overall, tied for the leading scorer with sophomore Kayla Smith, who provided a good chunk of the Pride’s offense in the first 16 minutes of action.
Kelly in particular struggled to find her footing in the first half. McNutt tried to give her a little jolt at the half.
“She was upset at halftime, and I just told her, I said, ‘You’re either gonna battle through it, and you’re gonna play, or you’re gonna sit,’ ” he said. “And she started going. She hit a couple corner 3s, we ran a play for her in the fourth, got another 3.”
Having three players put up double figures in the points column allowed the rest of the team to settle down and focus on rebounding and winning the 50-50 balls that McNutt said they weren’t winning in the first half.
“As a whole group, I just thought we buckled down,” he said.
“We got after them defensively, we turned them over, we were able to execute offensively, we hit some big shots, and we just couldn’t do that in the first half.”
Coe-Brown’s effort couldn’t mask inexperience: In addition to being a bit shorthanded – Vachon said he only had five girls able to practice on Monday – the Bears are still working through some early-season rust.
Considering the roster circumstances, the first half effort was admirable. They simply ran out of gas in the second half and weren’t able to make adjustments once MV found its groove.
“Once they came out in the second half and really started to put it to us, we couldn’t get past that,” Vachon said. “As far as my girls go, I was very proud of how they worked today. They did a good job. It’s just another building block.”
Against an MV team that finished 16-4 last season and has hopes of turning in a similarly stellar season, there are definitely positives for Coe-Brown to take away from Tuesday’s performance.
“Merrimack Valley is always a well-coached team. Really good program,” Vachon said. “I’m disappointed with the result, but I’m happy with the way my team worked.”