Madison Girls Basketball Survive Hopatcong

This was an all-too familiar script for the Madison High School girls basketball team. For the third time in 10 days, the Dodgers held a lead for most of the game, only to give it all back. The first two times, Madison suffered two tough one-point losses to Kittatinny and Parsippany.

Monday afternoon against Hopatcong in the opening round of the Lady Dodger Holiday Tournament, the script flipped.

After squandering a 11-point, second-half lead, Madison outscored Hopatcong 14-1 over the final 5:06, and the Dodgers won a hard-fought affair, 43-31, to advance to the tournament championship game. Madison hosts unbeaten Morris Knolls Tuesday at 3 p.m.

"Those last four minutes, I think we played our best defense that we've played this year," said Madison head coach Stephen Finkelstein.

The Dodgers led 24-13 two minutes into the third quarter before the Chiefs made their comeback. Hopatcong's Danielle Quimby scored nine of her team-leading 11 points in the third to pull Hopatcong within three late in the third. And after a back-and-forth start to the fourth quarter, Hopatcong pulled ahead on Melissa Krowl's three-point play with 5:06 to go, giving the Chiefs a 30-29 lead and momentum.

"I feel like we get on these runs and then we stumble sometimes," Finkelstein said. "We've played sluggishly at times."

But this time, the Dodgers found a way to wrest control back from their opponents. Hopatcong's lead lasted all of 10 seconds thanks to Ali Foulsham, who made two free throws to put the Dodgers back in front, 31-30.

The Dodgers' lead might have been short-lived, too, but Nikki Caruso blocked a pair of shots underneath the Hopatcong basket. On the ensuing Madison possession, Caruso found herself wide open in the corner, and she buried a 3-pointer to give the Dodgers a four-point lead with 4:25 left. The Chiefs would get no closer.

"We sometimes need something to fire us up," said Caruso, who led Madison with 13 points. "Our lead wasn't very big, and that shot triggered us."

Madison appeared a safe bet to advance to the tournament championship game after Mackenzie Ellis scored six straight points early in the second quarter to give Madison a 16-6 lead. Her third made shot in that sequence came after she rebounded her own miss twice. The Dodgers out-rebounded Hopatcong, 31-18, in the game.

"Mackenzie's scoring burst was huge for us," Finkelstein said. "I think that was one of the key moments in the game."

A finger roll by Caruso and a layup by Foulsham after a Chelsea Davies steal extended the Dodgers' lead to 20-8 with a minute left in the first half. Hopatcong scored five straight to end the period, but the Dodgers were firmly in control – and moreso after a Foulsham 3-pointer restored Madison's double-digit lead 11 seconds into the second half.

But Hopatcong's pressure defense caused problems and limited Madison's offense. At the same time, Quimby, the Chiefs' best scorer according to Finkelstein, caught fire.

"She's very good, and we knew that coming in," the coach said. "She was very hard to keep down."

Quimby hit 3-pointers on back-to-back Hopatcong possessions to pull the Chiefs within 27-23 with 2:41 left in the third period. That led to Finkelstein setting up a box-and-1 defense to contain her. Quimby responded by playing possum, standing in the corner of the court on the baseline, and taking both she and her defender out of play.

After several possessions of 4-on-4 basketball, the Madison defense lost track of Quimby in the corner, and she took advantage by cutting to the hoop and drawing a shooting foul. She knocked down the two free throws with 5:27 left, pulling Hopatcong within 29-27.

Krowl made Hopatcong's final field goal 21 seconds later to give the Chiefs the lead, but they would score just one more point – a Kristen Toropwi free throw with 2:57 to play – the rest of the way.

The Dodgers extended their lead thanks in large part to Davies, the senior point guard. With Madison leading 35-31, she outraced her defender to catch a pair of long inbounds passes on back-to-back possessions. The first led to an easy layup, the second led to a foul and two free throws, which put the game out of reach.

"Chelsea did a phenomenal job of getting to the rim," Finkelstein said. "This was her best game of the year, I think."

Madison's opponent in Tuesday's tournament final, Morris Knolls, knocked off Boonton 45-25 in the tournament's first game. The Golden Eagles are 3-0, having also defeated Parsippany Hills and Bloomfield.

SCORING SUMMARY

Hopatcong (0-3)  6    7   11   7   -   31

Madison (2-2)       8  12    9  14  -   43

INDIVIDUAL SCORING

HOP- Danielle Quimby 11, Melissa Krowl 10, Kristen Toropwi 7, Nicole Jaronsky 3

MAD- Nikki Caruso 13, Ali Foulsham 10, Chelsea Davies 7, Mackenzie Ellis 6, Rachel Misko 5, Evan Foulsham 2