SPORTS | THE NORTHPORT RECORD, JANUARY 6, 2005

Girls’ Basketball » Northport 54, Commack 41

Lady Tigers Take Rivalry’s Opening Salvo

Fighting ‘excruciating’ pain, Byers scores a career-high 24 points

By Michael R. Sisak / The Northport Record

Northport senior Jillian Byers instinctively flicked up a shot as she fell away from the basket following a jarring blow from a Commack defender, near the end of the third quarter in the championship game of the Suffolk Shootout, last Thursday.

Byers’ impact with the floor, in the navy-colored section of wood between the key and the three-point arc, intensified the spearing lower back pain that pulsed through her finely-tuned body since she landed on her tailbone during the Lady Tigers’ semifinal win over Westhampton, two days earlier.

As Byers writhed, her shot descended through the net cords with seven-tenths of a second left in the quarter and an official charged the overzealous defender from the rival Lady Cougars with a foul. A semi-circle of teammates helped pick Byers up, about 10 feet from the Northport bench, and she walked to the foul line so shaken and aching, she said afterward, that her free throw was a sure miss.

The basket, though, was a defining moment for Byers and Northport. It pushed the Lady Tigers ahead 37-34 and precipitated an 11-point fourth quarter for Byers. The three-sport varsity phenomenon and consummate warrior finished with a career-high 24 points on 9-of-13 shooting. She also grabbed 9 rebounds. Northport (2-0 in League II, 9-0 overall) secured a 54-41 victory and the tournament title.

“I knew that if I put that in, that would pump every single person in the gym up,” Byers said afterward, as she propped herself against a segment of blue-padded wall inside the quickly-emptied Northport gymnasium. “I thought it was a real turning point, because it’s the end of the quarter and for somebody to make a shot like that — like I’ve seen Ali [Fourney] do plenty of times at the end of a quarter — it just gets the whole team riled up and ready to go.”

Commack, which has not defeated Northport since Danielle Hurley led a 53-49 upset on February 13, 1996, showed promises of an intense challenge at the start.

Hurley watched as the Lady Cougars built a 10-2 lead, even as their freshman sensation, shooting guard Samantha Prahalis, sat on the bench encumbered with a pair of fouls she picked up within the first minute and 20 seconds.

Commack (1-0 in League II, 6-2 overall) forced 4 turnovers in the first 4 minutes and caught a makeshift Northport lineup lagging on transitions. They worked the ball inside to senior forwards Danielle DeAngelis (11 points) and Rachel Sturm (4 points) and emerged from mid-court sloppiness with an 8-point edge.

Northport junior Keri Schumacher, the speedy forward who sustained an intense right ankle sprain in the Westhampton game, did not play. Byers and Fourney, the senior center who aggravated a prior left knee injury in the same game, did not start, but were inserted midway through the opening quarter.

Almost on cue, Northport impelled 9 turnovers, netted 15 unanswered points and outscored Commack 17-3 in the second quarter.

“I didn’t realize it was that big until I looked in the book the next day and I said, ‘Holy crap they only had 3 points in the second quarter,’” Northport coach Rich Castellano said. “I didn’t realize it was that big of a differential.”

Byers, who missed two shots in the first quarter, found her rhythm and connected on all 4 of the field goals she attempted in the second.

“I’ve been saying for a long time she’s the best female athlete in the school, maybe the best athlete in the school,” Castellano said of Byers, an all-county in basketball, an all-Long Island in soccer and an all-American in lacrosse. “She knows what it takes to win and she knew what we needed to do, if Fourney wasn’t going to be full strength and we needed somebody to step up, she jumped very easily into that role.”

Byers had been averaging close to 9 points per game, this season, while Fourney (6 points, including a third-quarter layup that pushed her past the 1,000-point milestone) had averaged over 20 points per game. Commack’s two leading scorers, Prahalis (19.6 points per game) and senior point guard Erica Kaplan (12.7 points per game) were held to 11 and 6 points, respectively, and the Lady Cougars shot a marginal 6-of-25 in the first half (24 percent). Kaplan and Prahalis and Fourney were named to the all-tournament team and Byers was selected as the tournament’s most valuable player.

“We didn’t come out and play Commack basketball, as far as I’m concerned,” Commack coach Kim Radziul said. “[In the second quarter] we couldn’t score, we couldn’t make shots and then I think we stopped taking them, which is not what we typically do. We’re a good shooting team and I don’t know what happened, we kind of disappeared out there.”

The Lady Cougars re-emerged for a spell in the third quarter, as senior guard Lauren Majewski hit a 3-pointer to cut the Northport lead to 31-30. Byers answered with a long left-side jumper, but Commack kept pace as Kaplan sunk a pair of free throws after a foul by Northport junior Kelly Dunne. On the following possession, Dunne (6 points) stepped inside the arc and hit a jumper. About a minute later, Dunne grabbed the rebound off a miss by sophomore Kiera Schiavetta and fed Byers for the fade-away flick.

 “I had a choice to sit out and not play tonight, or go out there and do what I could for my team,” Byers said. “Ali and I had a long talk and we said, ‘are we going to play, are we not going to play,’ and we’re like, ‘we’ve got to do this.’”