Tottenville’s Kelly Fraser (l.) gets a piece of West 50th’s Street’s Nia Robinson’s layup. (An Rong Xu)
Tottenville got a chance for redemption rather quickly. No, the Pirates weren’t able to avenge their loss to rival McKee/Staten Island Tech. But Saturday they did leave everyone at the HS for Construction impressed with a 63-27 handling of West 50th Street Campus at the PSAL ‘A’ Girls Basketball Showcase.
“We tried to come out our hardest, because this will help us in the playoffs,” senior forward Kelly Fraser said. “We wanted to try and show what we could do, because we shouldn’t have lost to Tech.”
The defeat to MSIT on Wednesday likely relegated Tottenville (13-2) to a spot in the Class A playoffs. And that’s not the worst thing in the world, because after Saturday the Pirates look like they could make a serious run. Their 3-2 zone bottled up West 50th Street penetration and Fraser went off for 25 points.
“When you play in the [league] and these showcases, I know a lot of people are here watching who do the seeding,” Tottenville coach Cathy Morano said. “It’s always good to get a good showing, especially with a quality team like West 50th. It was a good opportunity to show what we can do.”
Morano didn’t know much about the Seahawks coming into the game, but saw quickly that they liked to get into the lane and finish inside, rather than take outside shots. So she stuck to a pack-it-in zone that never really let West 50th Street, a two-time ‘A’ semifinalist, get into a rhythm.
“I thought we played good defense,” Morano said. “We shut them down. We didn’t try to get into a run and gun game with them.”
The Seahawks were hurt early in the game when returning star Jade Venson reinjured her knee and had to come out. Coach Kinsley Kwateng was also missing a few other players, but didn’t want to use that as an excuse – especially after how well his girls played at the Amsterdam Upstate vs. Downstate Classic over the holidays against strong teams.
“It was like night and day,” Kwateng said. “And that was ‘AA’ competition. It’s not like we’ve never seen a zone before.”
Caleitha Berry was the lone West 50th Street player in double figures with 11 points. Victoria McFarland had 18 points to help out Fraser, who is starting to catch fire. She had 11 points in Tottenville’s 83-74 win against Curtis on Friday night.
For the Pirates, it wasn’t just a chance to demonstrate to the rest of the city how good they are, but also to see how they stack up. The answer they got was a positive one.
“Today everybody came out strong and everybody knocked down shots,” Fraser said. “We showed ourselves how good we could be.”
