On Thursday, The Montclair Girls Basketball Team narrowly defeated rivals Verona High School by a score of 35-34. Although Verona hit a buzzer-beater 3 at the end of the first quarter, they still trailed 13-8 heading into the second. Verona played much better both offensively and defensively in the second as they scored nine points to Montclair’s five. With the score tied at 17 coming out of halftime, Montclair was on a mission in the third. They outscored Verona by 8 as they only gave up one point due to the constant defensive pressure that they placed on Verona’s sputtering offense. Montclair went into the fourth with a comfortable 8-point lead, seeming like they had figured out Verona’s entire offense in the third quarter. Although Montclair once again scored 9 points in the 4th quarter, Verona began to figure out how to beat Montclair’s defense in this quarter, as they scored 16 points. That’s 6 more than they scored in the 2nd and 3rd quarters combined, and it shows how much Montclair’s defense bothered Verona’s usually strong offense throughout the entirety of the game. The last few minutes of the game were very stressful as Verona started to play the foul game. Junior Savannah Seawell was sent to the line each time by Verona, and she sunk 2-4. On the latter of her two misses, Verona grabbed the rebound and tried to get out on the break, but instead, committed a killer traveling violation. This travel gave Montclair the ball back and all but sealed the deal for this game. Seawell hit both of the ensuing free throws, and Verona got the ball back with only a few seconds to go and was down by 3 points. They quickly brought the ball up the court and hit a buzzer-beater jump shot, but this buzzer-beater was only a long 2 instead of the 3 that they needed to tie the game. This lapse in judgment by Verona helped Montclair salvage a scrappy win against a very strong Verona team who were favored to win coming into the game. Montclair’s hounding defense was the main reason for the win in a game that turned out to be very low-scoring. Montclair forced turnover after turnover out of Verona as they got 16 steals as a team. Amazingly, senior point guard Lizzy Giordano accounted for 9 of those steals, which are only part of the reason for why she had such a great game. Although Giordano is a pass-first player who runs Montclair’s offense, because she had so many fast break opportunities, she was able to notch a season-high 6 points on efficient shooting. She also added on 4 rebounds, and the fact that she only notched 2 assists isn’t indicative of how well she facilitated the ball and ran Montclair’s offense this game. Another key contributor on defense for Montclair is a familiar face, junior Savannah Seawell. She anchored Montclair’s defense as she got a season-high 5 blocks, bringing her season average to 2.5 blocks per game. She added on a steal, and her rebounding and scoring numbers were right in line with where they’ve been all season, as she scored 17 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. However, Montclair’s leading rebounder for this game was sophomore Carla Osborne, who grabbed 13 in the win over the Hillbillies. This was by far her best rebounding game of the year, and she is averaging 10.5 rebounds over her last 2 games, which is a big change from the 3 rebounds she was averaging over the first 2 games. Although Montclair’s scoring wasn’t as evenly distributed as Verona’s was, Montclair played like a well-oiled machine on defense. They were all over the place with their full and half-court presses and traps which gave Verona fits. They were able to execute this type of defensive scheme because of their chemistry and comfort with each other as a team. Without the chemistry, comfort, and communication that Montclair has as a team, their defense would be torn to shreds in a defensive set like the ones they utilized in this game. Montclair’s defense has been one of their strong points this year due to Coach Connell’s constantly adapting schemes and playcalling. So far this year, Coach Connell has been able to take a very good group of players and turn them into a terrific unit and team. With this win, Montclair moves to 3-2 on the year and will look to build on this big win in the New Year on January 4th away at Livingston, who are another one of Montclair’s rivals.