FALMOUTH — In steady, determined, unified fashion, the undefeated Falmouth Clipper girls got the job done.
Quarter by quarter last night, with the stands filled with Morse Pond Elementary School student fans, Falmouth head coach Bob Buscher’s girls picked apart a nevertheless gutsy Nauset Warriors’ squad until the 50-29 finale.
Falmouth High sophomore point guard Jenni DiCecco drives to the hoop past Nauset’s Jenny Tulloch in last night’s 50-29 Clipper victory to clinch the ACL championship title.
Sean Walsh/Capecod.com sports
The victory put Falmouth at 16-0 and clinched for the Clippers the 2014-15 Atlantic Coast League championship title. A brief, celebratory round of high fives, the perfunctory post-game handshake with its opponents and the Clippers were off to the locker room and onto thoughts of Sunday’s much-anticipated rivalry with Barnstable on the road.
In spite of some early cold shooting (6-13), Falmouth staked itself a 14-2 lead after the first quarter and increased that lead to 27-13 by the end of the first half.
“They (Nauset) do a good job, they came out in the end with a different twist to it a little,” Buscher said. “I thought they came out with that 3-2 like they did the first time so we had to adjust a little bit to that. We missed some easy stuff around the hoop.”
Falmouth junior center Taylor Miller led all scorers with 16 points and significantly dominated the boards with 12 for another notch in her double-double belt. Senior co-captain Alexa Johnson was the sole other Clipper to register double digit points with 11. Starting point guard Jenni DiCecco had five points to go along with seven assists but she also took down 10 rebounds. Tommi Gans nailed her trademark pair of three-pointers and added a bucket for eight points.
“We’re just finding that comfort zone, when to pass it to her (Miller) and when not and when Alexa would come through we swung her around once and got a layup out of it,” Buscher said.
Falmouth is 7-0 in league play. Nauset drops to 6-10 overall.
The Clippers jumped their lead in the third quarter to 39-25, but in the fourth quarter Miller really turned things up with eight of her 16 points and five rebounds while Gans buried a backbreaking three-pointer and Kyra Martino dropped in a key bucket.
Falmouth’s Nicole Gonsalves dribbles up court with Nauset’s Jenny Tulloch hot on her trail.
Sean Walsh/capecod.com sports
“Once you got it to (a) 14-15 (point lead), then it opened up,” Buscher said.
Nauset’s junior point guard Savannah Thomas and sophomore forward Marielle McEnaney each had nine points for the Warriors. Nauset went 8-38 from the field and shot 10-21 from the free throw line. Falmouth went 21-56 from the field.
Falmouth heads to Barnstable tomorrow for a 3:30 pm tip-off.
— Sean Walsh is the sports editor for www.capecod.com. His email is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @coachwalshccbm
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