Girls basketball: Putnam County hangs on, tops Seneca for TCC title

VARNA – Just before Thursday night’s Tri-County Conference championship game, Putnam County coach Jared Sale and Seneca coach Brian Holman told their teams that if their two clubs faced each other 10 times, each would likely win five and all of them by single digits.

They added that the difference in their first three meetings this season was the winning team “just made a few more shots” than the other.

This fourth and most recent clash was no different.

After the Irish twice rallied from eight points down in the second and 10 in the third, the Panthers finally held them at bay from the free-throw line.

A pair of free throws by in the fourth quarter by Ava Hatton, Gracie Ciucci and Mikenna Boyd, the latter with 19.6 seconds to play, earned PC a wild 37-34 victory and its first conference tournament title since 2018.

Ciucci ended up with 11 points, while Gabby Doyle chipped in nine on three 3-pointers, Hatton added seven and Maggie Richetta six for Putnam County, which sank only 7 of 21 free throws on the night but made the ones that counted down the stretch to win its sixth game in a row and ninth in its past 11 games.

For the No. 1-seeded Irish (17-8), Alyssa Zellers netted 10 points, Ella Sterling nine, Cassia Buchanan seven and Kennedy Hartwig six points and seven rebounds.

“We talked right before Christmas about team leadership, and our seniors stepped up. That’s what’s flipped the switch,” Sale said. “We’re playing our best basketball of the year right now, and I’m really happy with the effort.

“We talked about winning 50-50 balls and making more shots, and tonight we were able to do that … Over the last four to five weeks, we’ve been tough.”

Seneca, which won the first two meetings 36-27 and 42-39, then fell to the Panthers 29-25 in the third, struggled out of the gate, making just one of its first 11 shots from the field, hitting two, then starting the second quarter 0 for 5. PC wasn’t much better, going 3 for 10 in that quarter,

Still, it managed to use a couple of Richetta buckets to take an 18-10 lead.

Seven straight points – on a Doyle 3 and baskets by Hatton and Richetta – widened the gap to 30-20 halfway through the third quarter.

But Seneca didn’t give up as two free throws by Buchanan, one by Hartwig, a Zellers 3-pointer and a Buchanan 3 created a 9-1 run that pulled the Irish within 34-32.

In the final 3:12 of the game, however, Seneca managed only one score, a drive in the lane by Zellers with 8.3 seconds left. By then, the Panthers had made just enough free throws to hang on for the crown.

“That’s kind of been us. We just lack that edge and grit to get us going,” Holman said of his team’s slow offensive start. “We ran three plays in that first quarter absolutely perfectly, but just didn’t get the shot down … We have to get those shots in the basket to give us momentum, and tonight it cost us late.

“We must have to get tougher. When you get to big games, you have to have an edge. We have to find it in these last two weeks (of the regular season) or we’re going to be in trouble. … You saw it from us at the end, coming back from 10 down. We’re fine, playing hard and doing the right things down the stretch, but when you dig yourself that big a hole, sometimes you just run out of time and tonight, we ran out of time.”