BATH

Morse was looking good until Chelsea Ripley hit a buzzer-beater.

The Medomak Valley senior’s shot gave her team a one-point lead heading into the break in Friday night’s Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference girls high school basketball game in Bath, but it sparked a much more important third quarter. The visiting Panthers sprinted out to an 11-0 run to start the frame and built a game-high 12-point lead.

For a team like Morse that often struggles for points, sometimes that’s all it takes. The Shipbuilders pulled within four late but never quite recovered, falling, 48- 41 and missing an opportunity to secure a playoff spot in Class A South.

“We came out flat and we stopped running our offense,” Morse coach Becky Roak said. “They converted on the other end. We didn’t come out ready to play and they came out with a lot of fire. I think we scored three points in the third and that sealed the deal. We played hard for three quarters.”

Sierra Wallace splashed a trey, and an inside bucket from Emma Gould gave Morse (5-11) a 20-19 lead inside 15 seconds, but Ripley’s jumper from the freethrow line stopped the momentum cold. Then Gabby DePatsy took over for Medomak Valley (5-11), scoring seven of her 14 points in the third frame and pulling in five boards. Her 3-pointer on the Panthers’ second possession quickly put them up 26-20 and sparked the run.

“I think it’s just the mental lapses,” Morse senior Noa Sreden said. “A lot of times, we’ll come out of the locker room really fired up, but we’ll make like something small on the defensive end and it translates into our offense. We just kind of have these mental lapses. Once it all starts, it’s kind of like a domino effect and it keeps building.”

The Shipbuilders were stuck on 20 points until the 2:14 mark in the third when a Wallace free-throw broke the ice. A pair of Gould lay-ins in the paint were the only other buckets of the frame.

With just three turnovers in the quarter, it wasn’t errant mistakes costing the Shipbuilders. The shots just weren’t falling.

“We need to run our offense and not freelance,” Roak said. “Obviously, there’s going to be situations where we have a fast-break situation and you can freelance a little bit, but when we’re actually in the half court, we need to run our offense. We proved it tonight when we ran our offense, good things happened. We got some good looks, good open looks. But when we try to freelance, sometimes we don’t generate that same offense.”

Final push

Morse cut the deficit to eight with six minutes left to play and turned to outside shooting to get even closer. Wallace (12 points) hit her third trey of the night before Sreden (14 points, three assists) stepped back and swished one of her own to make the score 42-38 and force a Medomak Valley timeout with 4:26 on the clock.

The Shipbuilders had just one more bucket in them, though, and three freethrows from DePatsy iced the game. The junior guard notched a double-double with a game-high 17 points and 11 rebounds.

“A great fourth-quarter effort, come back from 12 down, but when you have those lapses against good teams, especially when you struggle offensively, it’s hard to come back from a deficit like that,” Roak said.

“We don’t have a ton of varsity experience,” Sreden said. “I think we have a lot of people that have stepped up and played huge roles and I think sometimes we forget that they are sophomores or the first-time-on-varsity kind of players. I think just confidence. We definitely need to just sometimes grab the ball, slow it down, set something up and go from there.”

The defense was much more consistent for Morse, forcing 17 first-half turnovers and clogging up the paint for most of the night. The Panthers scored many of their points from outside, hitting three treys and multiple baseline jumpers. Ripley finished with eight points, while Hallie Kunesh tallied 13 and Aubrey Schaeffer hit a buzzer-beater to end the third quarter.

Gould finished with six and Faulkingham split eight points with Mae Winglass for Morse, which is currently sitting in the ninth and final playoff spot in Class A South. The Shipbuilders might need to win one of their last two games to avoid Mt. Ararat catching them, but they have plenty to focus on as it is.

“We have talked about it, but ultimately we want to go out and play our game every night,” Roak said. “It would have been a big win. So we did talk about that before the game but we also know we have two more to go. We can’t worry about that. We’ve just got to come out, play hard and leave it all out there.”

“I think it’s always in the back of our minds,” Sreden said. “We try not to put too much pressure on going into games, but we know some do count. I think it’s been motivating us, but it’s always in the back of our minds.”

Medomak 48,
Morse 41

Friday, at Bath Middle School
Medomak — 10 11 15 12 — 48
Morse— 119516—41
Medomak — Chelsea Ripley 4-0-8,
Hallie Kunesh 5-2-13, Sadie Cohen 2-
0-4, Maddy White 0-0-0, Gabby
DePatsy 6-3-17, Kayla Donlin 1-1-3,
Lydia Simmons 0-1-1, Aubrey Schaeffer 1-0-2. Totals — 19-7-48.
Morse — Maddy Mitchell 0-1-1,
Emma Gould 3-0-6, Mae Winglass 2-
0-4, Isabella Monbouquette 0-0-0,
Sierra Wallace 4-1-12, Hope Faulkingham 1-2-4, Noa Sreden 5-2-14.
Totals — 15-6-41.
3-point field goals — (Med) DePatsy
2, Kunesh; (Mo) Wallace 3, Sreden 2.
Records — Medomak Valley 5-11,
Morse 5-11.
Up next for the Shipbuilders —
Tuesday at Waterville, 6:30 p.m.