By Tim Kelly
There are no style points in the state basketball playoffs. Every win is beautiful and a loss ends your season.
The Ocean City High School girls’ basketball team turned in a gritty performance Tuesday night, defeating Timber Creek 69-45 to open their defense of the South Jersey Group 3 championship.
Abbey Fenton’s 25 points, including five 3-pointers, sparked the Raiders, (21-6) who picked up where they left off following their Cape Atlantic League championship game win over Middle Township last week.
“I think that game helped our confidence a lot,” said Fenton, a 5-7 junior. “It’s win or go home now, and we like that. It helps us play hard and play as a team.”
Timber Creek (8-14), representing the Olympic Conference Patriot Division, played like a team that had nothing to lose, hustling at both ends of the court and confusing the Raid Raiders with their zone defense at times.
“We’ve struggled against zones, and they were very aggressive,” Raider Coach Paul Baruffi said. “You have to give (Timber Creek) credit. They really hustled.”
With the win, Ocean City earned a spot in the second round and will play host to Lacey Township on Thursday.
It wasn’t easy. The Raiders opened up a 10-point lead in the first quarter as they took the ball inside where the smaller Chargers got into foul trouble trying to stop center Emma Finnegan. Finnegan hit all six of her free throws and Danielle Donoghue added five points from the outside, and it looked as if the rout might be on.
The second quarter, won by Timber Creek 18-17, was a different story. The scrambling zone forced the Raiders into bad passes, and they committed five turnovers as the Chargers drew to within four points.
Fenton seemed to snap the Raiders out of it with a steal and pair of foul shots and a 3-ball, and Finnegan’s free throw opened the lead back up to 10 points midway through the quarter.
Timber Creek refused to go away as senior guards Erin Williams and Alexys Kasprzak forced more turnovers and sent Donoghue to the bench with her own foul trouble.
Donoghue, the team’s leading scorer with an 11.1 point average, was held to 7 until late in the third.
“I take my starters out after their second foul if it’s still early, but I thought some of our younger players (sophomore Marlee Brestle and frosh Marin Panico) did a good job keeping us going during that stretch,” Baruffi said. “And Abbey Fenton had a great overall game.”
Fenton picked up the slack offensively and responded by hitting a 3-pointer with 1:16 to play and beat the buzzer with another deep three from the corner to make it 34-25 at the half.
“We’ve been practicing our 3-point shooting a lot and tonight they were going in for me,” Fenton said.
Timber Creek continued to hang around in the third, but seemed to run out of gas in the final stanza. Ocean City’s superior physicality resulted in Williams fouling out with more than five minutes remaining and Kasprzak about a minute later.
Then, Ocean City put the game out of reach as Finnegan scored five points to spark a 10-0 run and open a 21-point lead, their largest of the game to that point.
Afterward, Baruffi said that while the Raiders did not exhibit textbook execution, they did what they had to do to win.
Tori Rolls, the hero of the Middle Township game, used her speed to match that of the Chargers’ backcourt players, and senior guard Savanna Holt provided a spark off the bench.
“We’re going to have to work more on improving against zone and pressure defenses,” Baruffi said.
Nevertheless, OC lives to fight another day.
