Defense leads Lebanon girls basketball past Hollis Brookline in D2 title game

MANCHESTER – The Lebanon High School girls basketball team won games this year by playing disciplined man-to-man defense and taking away the opponent’s best player.

The Raiders did the former Friday night, and just enough of the later, to finish off an undefeated season.

No. 1 Lebanon held No. 6 Hollis Brookline to its lowest offensive output of the season, and kept Cassandra Stapelfeld in check long enough, to beat the Cavaliers 44-35 in the Division II championship game at Southern New Hampshire University.

The title is the sixth in program history for the Raiders (22-0), and first since 2013, when they also finished the season with a perfect record.

“We’ve been resilient all year,” Lebanon coach Tim Kehoe said. “This hasn’t been the most gifted team I’ve ever coached but it’s clearly been the most consistent. For the last four months, we’ve just played consistent basketball and we’ve gone through runs where nothing seems to faze us.

“I think we’ve done a great job all year of holding the best player on another team down. If you look at our scores, for most of the teams we played had a season-low against us. We played great man-to-man defense, we switched off screens.”

The Raiders, with Josephine Brown leading the way, held Stapelfeld to 15 points, seven below her average in the playoffs and well below the 27 points the HB senior scored in the semifinals. That included just one point in the second and third quarter.

Anna Wolke led Lebanon with 16 points, including the first 10 of the game for the Raiders, while Becky Wright added 11 points and seven rebounds and Joslin Wainwright had seven points and 18 boards. Lebanon outrebounded the Cavs 21-14 in the second half, with Wainwright grabbing 12 of her rebounds in the final 16 minutes.

“We hadn’t been doing well rebounding and when we were in the locker room at halftime, (Kehoe) goes ‘to win this game, you have to have to play good defense and rebound,’ ” Wainwright said. “We rebound all the time, let’s get it.”

HB (16-6) got eight points and eight rebounds from Joanna Balsamo and Elizabeth Atkinson added six points and six boards despite battling foul trouble. The sophomore played just 19 minutes after picking up her fourth foul with 3:11 left in the third.

The Cavs struggled to shoot for most of the night, finishing 12 of 44 from the field and just 6 of 14 at the line.

“They put really good pressure on the ball, and they get really good help, and they do it well,” HB coach Bob Murphy said. “Part of it is that it’s not just one player on you. When you’re driving by that player, they’ve got very good help defense from the weak side.

“(Atkinson) only played half the game. If she was in the game more than that, things might have been different. She was playing really well at both ends while she was in the game.”

Lebanon also had a tough night at the line, making 8 of 19 free throws, but in the fourth quarter, many of those misses turned into offensive rebounds and second-chance points.

But early on, the Raiders’ offense consisted of Wolke hitting jump shots from the left corner, as her first eight points of the game came from the same area on the floor.

“We tried to come up with a defense that would stop (Wright) and (Wainwright) because they’ve been their keys all season,” Murphy said. “We came up with a scheme that did put a stop to them early in the game, but it left (Wolke) open on the baseline. We were taking our chances with that and she hit four in a row. We had to get out of that scheme. We got out to our regular 2-3 zone and they (Wright and Wainwright) started getting into the act.”

It was a move that Kehoe anticipated and he thought his sophomore guard would respond.

“Anna is the type of kid who I don’t think is awed by any moment,” he said. “We thought she was going to have a big game (Friday). She constantly attacked and she wasn’t bothered by any of this. She just keeps playing. She came out and hit some big shots early. It spread the floor out and gave us the opportunity to get the ball down low.”

Every time Lebanon would go up by two or three possessions, the Cavs would claw back into it, and the Raiders never led by more than seven points until the fourth quarter, when a basket by Wainwright made it 33-24 with 6:19 to play.

But Stapelfeld responded with a three-point play at the other end, and after a Lebanon turnover, Brodie Kelley scored for the Cavs to make it a four-point game. After another Raiders turnover, Atkinson drove to the basket and scored to cap a 7-0 run by HB and cut the lead to 33-31 with 3:40 remaining.

Back-to-back baskets by Madeline Hastings and Wainwright put Lebanon back up six, and it looked like the Raiders would get more after getting into the bonus. But Lebanon missed the front-end of three straight one-and-ones, but after the third miss, Wainwright grabbed the rebound and put it back for give Lebanon a 39-32 lead with 1:29 to go.

Stapelfeld answered with a 3-pointer to make it a four-point game with 1:10 still to play, but the Cavs wouldn’t score again and Lebanon started making free throws, going 5 of 8 at the line the rest of the way.

“We needed some outside shooting, and we got it,” Kehoe said. “We missed some foul shots, but we regained our composure.

“This is a smart team and we play to our game plan. We don’t deviate from that, even when things break down. I think that’s the power of this team. They’re undefeated because they are consistent and smart.”