Milford beats St. Thomas to advance to D2 girls basketball semifinals

MILFORD – Plenty of teams have tried to shut down Milford High School’s Dina Pitsas this season.

St. Thomas was able to, somewhat, on Friday, but the rest of the Spartans were able to pick up the slack.

Pitsas made just one field goal, but was 10 of 12 from the free throw line, and No. 4 Milford defeated No. 12 St. Thomas 57-35 in the quarterfinals of the Division II girls basketball tournament. The win puts the Spartans into the semifinals, where they will face No. 1 Lebanon at 7:30 p.m. on Monday at Southern New Hampshire University.

“It’s final four time,” Milford coach Steve Signor said. “We prepared very well. We talked about the different defenses they were going to be showing us to isolate Dina out of the play. It was time to step up and a lot of them made some big shots.”

Pitsas still finished with a game-high 13 points, and Milford also got 12 points off the bench from sophomore Kaitlyn Matthews, who teamed with Pitsas to defend St. Thomas’ Meagan Flynn.

Flynn finished with a team-high 11 points but no one else had more than seven, as the Saints (9-11) went more than 11 minutes without a field goal, including the entire second quarter.

“No field goals in the second quarter killed us,” St. Thomas coach Sabrina Payeur said. “We had a game plan, stopping Dina, which I think is everyone’s game plan. It was OK, we just got outrebounded. They crashed hard and we needed to crash harder. They had lots of second shots and we were getting only one shot, and we weren’t making that one shot.”

Jessica Ryan added nine points for Milford and Adelle Pitsas played solid defense against St. Thomas’ Mariah Desmarais, who finished with seven points.

“We focused a lot on stopping (Desmarais) and (Flynn),” Signor said. “I think Adelle Pitsas did a great job. We had her on (Desmarais) for a lot of the game. We rotated Dina and Kaitlyn on (Flynn) and that was huge. I had Adelle off and not going in for help defense and I think it helped because we would stop their drives, but if they dished off that, that was where they were deadly and we locked that down.”

Reagan Williams hit a 3 for St. Thomas in the first quarter that cut Milford’s lead to 13-10 with 2:12 left in the first quarter. But after that basket, the Saints wouldn’t get another field goal until Flynn hit a jumper 1:17 into the third quarter.

By then, the Spartans led by 14 points. That advantage ballooned to 20 points in the final minute of the quarter.

Now Milford gets another shot at Lebanon. The Raiders won in Milford by 28 points on Jan. 18, and beat Coe-Brown, 61-28, in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Portsmouth and Windham will play in the other semifinal on Monday at 5:30 p.m.