Girls basketball: Putnam County, Seneca pull out close wins in Tri-County semis

VARNA – Both semifinals in the Tri-County Conference Girls Basketball Tournament went down to the wire Tuesday.

No. 1-seeded Seneca rallied from a 10-point deficit late in the third quarter to beat No. 4 Marquette 43-39, while No. 3 Putnam County edged No. 2 Roanoke-Benson 43-38.

The Fighting Irish (15-7) and Panthers (17-7) will meet in the title game at 8 p.m. Thursday.

It will be the fourth meeting between the teams this season. Seneca won the first two (36-27 and 42-39), and Putnam County won the most recent 29-25.

“It’ll be a bit of a chess match,” Putnam County coach Jared Sale said.

Seneca 43, Marquette 39: With 2:28 left, Seneca sophomore Alyssa Zellers caught an inbounds pass in the corner and drained a 3-pointer.

The long ball completed the Fighting Irish’s comeback from a 10-point deficit and gave Seneca its first lead since early in the first quarter.

“It’s usually supposed to go to our posts, but we had to get open because they were packing in the middle,” Zellers said. “I just had to get open and focus on my shot.”

The Irish trailed 27-17 at halftime after Marquette’s Chloe Larson drained a buzzer-beater 3 and Seneca faced a 34-24 deficit when Larson sank another 3 with 2:15 left in the third.

However, Seneca scored the next five points and entered the fourth down 36-29.

“[We were nervous but] it was a good nervous,” Zellers said. “It was like butterflies, but we weren’t down on ourselves. We all picked each other up.

“At the end of the third quarter [I thought the comeback was possible]. We were moving the ball pretty well.”

Kennedy Hartwig buried a 3 to start a 7-0 run that she capped with a bucket on an assist from Zellers that tied it at 38 with 3:39 left.

Zellers then hit the last field goal of the game with 2:28 left and Hartwig hit a pair of free throws with 1.2 seconds left to seal it.

“One thing I will say about this group is we’re steady,” Seneca coach Brian Holman said. “We don’t get rattled. We do our thing and it’s great when the shots start going in. We dug ourselves a hole, but in the second half we got post touches. Some of them went in and what happens is once they go in, your shooters start to be able to get in rhythm. We were fortunate to make a couple big shots.”

Avery Durdan split a pair of free throws with 3:28 left to give Marquette a 39-38 lead, but the Crusaders didn’t score again, missing three shots and turning the ball over three times, including twice in the final 30 seconds.

“We sped them up a little bit to get us close,” Holman said, “and once we sped them up and were able to get the game in our favor, we just locked down our defensive rotations and Lainie Olson had three contested rebounds in a row. Those were huge and we finally made some free throws.”

Marquette got off to a strong start as Lily Craig, Larson and Eva McCallum made 3s and the Crusaders built a 13-7 lead and led 13-10 after one quarter.

The Crusaders did the bulk of their damage with Craig, their leading scorer, on the bench as she was called for her third foul with 2:54 left in the first.

“I was really happy with how we came out in the first,” Marquette coach Eric Price said. “We moved the ball well and knocked down some shots. Defensively, I thought we did a really good job.

“In the second half, it almost felt like we felt more pressure to win than they did. They sped up the game a little bit and we turned it over four times in our first seven possessions. They started getting a little momentum and believing and we were just passive offensively.”

Hartwig led Seneca with 13 points, while Zellers had nine and Ella Sterling added eight.

McCallum had 14 to lead Marquette, while Larson added 13.

Putnam County 43, Roanoke-Benson 38: Sale said his players “get sick of” how often the team works on free throws.

But it paid off Tuesday as the Panthers scored 11 of their 13 points in the fourth quarter from the line.

“We spend a lot of time at the foul line in practice just for situations like this,” Sale said.

Putnam County led by as many as six points in the third quarter, but the Rockets scored the final seven of the period to take a 31-30 to the fourth.

PC went back ahead on a bucket by Maggie Spratt with 5:37 left before hitting 11 of 13 from the line and holding R-B scoreless the final 2:51.

“It was a gutty performance,” PC junior Ava Hatton said. “We stuck through it. We fought as a team and we got the job done. That’s just what needs to happen.”

Between the third and fourth quarters, Sale said Hatton came to the huddle and said, “This is working,” and the Panthers made an offensive change.

“We got a couple flex cut looks off it, got to the foul line and got a couple of runouts, so that was nice,” Sale said.

Hatton made 7 of 8 free throws in the fourth quarter and 12 of 14 in the game en route to a game-high 20 points.

“We took charge,” Hatton said about the fourth quarter. “We said we need to win. We haven’t played in a championship game yet this season, and I’m like, ‘This is the time.’”

The game was back and forth all night with R-B taking a 17-11 lead after the first quarter. PC built a seven-point lead in the second and led 27-22 at halftime behind four second quarter 3s – two from Hatton and one each from Gracie Ciucci and Gabby Doyle.

Along with her 20 points, Hatton had six rebounds, four assists and two steals, while Ciucci and Maggie Richetta scored eight points each. Ciucci also had seven rebounds and two steals.