Girl’s Basketball Falls Short in Title Game vs Gloucester

This afternoon, girl’s basketball lost their first game of the season to Gloucester City in the title game of the Audubon Holiday Tournament. The final score was 32-24, making Cinnaminson’s record 3-1.

The Pirates reached the title game with a 42-26 win over tournament host Audubon on Tuesday.

It was a low-scoring first half for both teams. Cinnaminson was losing at halftime with a score of 9-6.

Senior Marisa Dileo was the lone point-scorer in the first quarter, putting one point on the board off a free throw. Dileo, junior Tori Robinson and sophomore Angela Oliveira scored 5 points combined in the second quarter.

“Offensively, we were just hoping the shots would fall. I don’t think we hit a 3 today. It’s really hard to win a game when you do that,” head coach Bret Jenkins said when asked about the offensive performance. “We can’t make excuses. We have an injury. We need other people to step up and score. We were unable to do that.”

Cinnaminson’s offense was more successful in the second half, scoring a total of 18 points. However, this effort was not enough to overcome the 23 points Gloucester put on the score board.

At the end of the third quarter, Cinnaminson was trailing Gloucester City by 1 with a score of 16-15, making the fourth quarter crucial in determining the winner.

Junior Anne O’Malley was the top scorer of the fourth quarter.

“We wanted to move the ball around, drive, and take as many shots as possible to get it in there,” O’Malley said when asked about Cinnaminson’s plan heading into the final quarter.

The Pirates scored 9 points in the fourth quarter and grabbed their first lead of the game with about seven minutes remaining.

More Cinnaminson players scored in the fourth quarter than any other. Five girls scored at least one point in the final eight minutes.

However, Cinnaminson’s team effort could not top the points racked up by Gloucester City’s top scorer Nicole Velez.

Shutting Velez down was one of Jenkins’ goals in preparing for today’s matchup.

“Before the game, we talked about what we wanted to do to try and contain Velez. I thought we did a really nice job of that in the first three quarters, but I think we struggled trying to contain Velez in the fourth quarter,” Jenkins said. “Velez just basically took over in the fourth quarter.”

The game remained a back and forth battle up until the last second. Cinnaminson scored 3 points in the final two minutes and Gloucester scored 6.

Despite the loss, O’Malley had a positive outlook on the rest of the season.

“We have a lot to work on. It’s only the beginning of the season. We’ll get there,” she said.

Girl’s basketball returns to the court on Monday, January 4 with a home game against Woodrow Wilson at 6pm.

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Scoring:
Marisa DiLeo – 7
Tori Robinson – 5
Anne O’Malley – 5
Maddie Ogden – 3
Angela Oliveira – 2
Kelly Kane – 2