PALMER – The Holyoke girls basketball team looked like it was lagging a step behind when it hit the floor against Palmer on Wednesday night. It had been nearly two weeks since the Purple Knights had seen game action, and it showed in their first quarter of play.
“We have not played a game in 13 days, so we have been trying to stay fresh and ready to go. I think… that was a factor in our slow start,” Holyoke head coach Andrea Enright said. “I thought we did a good job of not letting it frazzle us…(maybe) we’re not hitting shots right now, our movements are not where we’d like it to be, but I thought we got better each quarter.”
After the home team outscored Holyoke 12-7 in the first quarter, the Purple Knights snapped back into their typical style of play, getting their legs under them and cruising to a 48-32 victory against Palmer.
Yamaya Perez led the way for Holyoke with 17 points, 14 of which came in the last three quarters.
“(The) first quarter I was a little nervous, not only for myself but for my team, just because I know the momentum of us getting back together after 13 days was gonna be hard,” Perez said. “But I still had faith we were gonna pull it through, and that’s what happened.”
In order to pull out the win, Holyoke had to get past the double threat of sisters Madalyn and Charlotte Theriault, who were dominant for the Panthers in the opening period. The two combined for all 12 of Palmer’s points in the first quarter, and seemed to score at will against the Purple Knights, who had trouble containing them.
“We know that the sisters on that team, they’re both really good and we just want to make sure when (Madalyn) gets the ball, we’re just gonna kind of sandwich her and make it difficult,” Enright said. “We don’t have a lot of height, so we’ve got to use our scrappiness to our advantage.”
That scrappiness showed on the score sheet – Holyoke finished with 20 total team fouls, with a few calls that had the crowd up in arms at multiple points during the game. But the number of fouls didn’t hurt Holyoke in the long run, and their grit and determination was a key part of their victory, as was their strong teamwork on both sides of the ball. The Purple Knights are led by a group of upperclassmen that have played together for a long time, and their team chemistry and reliance on each other shows whenever they have the ball.
“Offensively, I think we did well with making extra passes going into the second and third quarter,” Perez said. “(We were) just finding each other, finding the hot hand and knowing who to feed it to all the time.”
Often that hot hand was Perez, who knocked down three triples and juked a couple of opposing players right out of their socks. Her coach complimented not only her well-honed basketball skills, but also how she thinks the game.
“She keeps her head up, she sees the court really well. She’s able to make in-game decisions – as a coach, you can’t always relay information fast enough for the players,” Enright said on Perez. “So she’s kind of that coach on the floor and and she sees things and makes decisions based on what she notices, which is huge for us.”
Besides Perez, Holyoke shared the responsibility of secondary scoring; junior Bianca Ortiz was the team’s No. 2 scorer with nine points, just ahead of senior Kleriz Matos and junior Ashley Vazquez, who each collected six points. Ortiz’s contributions go beyond just scoring – the Purple Knights as a whole are a smaller team, and Enright relies on Ortiz, one of her taller players, to collect rebounds in the paint when her smaller players can’t.
“I try my best to help my coach get my team up with the boards. We’re all kind of short, so I’m one of the tall ones to get up there,” Ortiz said.
“Bianca is just a beast,” Enright said on Ortiz. “It’s hard to stop her because she can do everything offensively.”
One of the other major factors in Holyoke’s win was Vazquez, who may not have finished with the most points, but distributed the ball effectively and always knew where her teammates were.
“Ashley works to make everybody around her better. She doesn’t care who scores, she just want to make sure she gets the ball to the right person in the right spot at the right moment,” Enright said. “That oftentimes isn’t a stat that shows up, but it is a huge part of our success. It’s underrated to most people, but not to us.”
Holyoke improved to 3-0 on the young season, and the club is back in action Jan. 4 against Minnechaug.