A feverish third quarter faded into a stodgy fourth, and then the end came. It came gradually, a slight Bayonne lead inching higher, time leaking away, inevitability finally dawning.
It came with all the cold finality of endings, desolate and irretrievable, difficult to fathom. But No. 1 seed Bayonne had beaten No. 4 Westfield, 49–40, in the North 2, Group 4 semifinals, and there was nothing left to say, nothing left to do.
Bayonne advanced to the sectional championship, where it will face No. 7 Scotch Plains-Fanwood, which lost to Westfield by a combined 38 points in two regular-season meetings.
This game, played Saturday afternoon at Bayonne High School, was the de facto sectional championship. Westfield knew it. Bayonne knew it. The fans yelling themselves hoarse knew it.
“These are the top two [teams] in the section,” Bayonne head coach James Turner said. “This game is championship atmosphere.”
Westfield’s hope fizzled in the fourth quarter after a barren stretch of shooting. The Blue Devils went the first seven minutes of the quarter without a field goal and finished the quarter with 5 points. Bayonne hardly dazzled offensively in the quarter, either, scoring 4 points in over six minutes until knocking down a slew of free throws late.
“We were getting the shots,” Westfield head coach Liz McKeon said. “We just weren’t making them.”
The third quarter was different. Chaos took over. The ball whipped from end to end.
The fans screamed their appreciation. There was no dedicated student section, no segregated home/away seating. Just a bunch of people packed into a gym, sitting wherever they could sit, wherever they could find a good vantage point.
One moment exemplified the madness. At one point the ball lodged between the rim and the backboard, and everyone looked around for a second, wondering how to unstick it. So an official borrowed a cane from an elderly fan to poke out the ball.
The third quarter was the Sara Rooney quarter. Rooney hit a pair of threes and forced steals with tenacious defense.
In assuming scoring duties for a quarter, Rooney picked up the slack left by Bayonne’s second-half silencing of Annie Ryan. Ryan played an enormous first half, twirling and twisting and hitting shots on the run.
“Everything goes through Annie Ryan,” Turner said. He added, “We said, they have the big three (Ryan, Sutton Factor and Paige Gorczyca)—we gotta shut two of them down. We’re not gonna shut all three down.”
Ryan’s and Rooney’s play counteracted a pair of big performances from Bayonne’s Janaya Meyers and Mckenzie Neal.
Meyers, an athletic guard, scored 18 points and had 8 rebounds. She reached deep into her weapons arsenal, pulling out an around-the-back layup, a chasedown block, a powerful blow-by. At one point, she drove and pulled up, moving so much faster yet somehow slower than her defender, and hit a jumper.
Neal, a hefty center, scored 12 points and had 5 blocks. She led Bayonne’s rebounding brigade, producing offensive rebounds and second-chance opportunities.
“She’s got size on us,” McKeon said, “but these girls fought tooth and nail. I couldn’t be disappointed. The second-chance points really hurt us.”
Westfield used Catie Carayannopoulos to exploit Neal’s size. Carayannopoulos drilled a three in the first quarter, her first of the season, forcing Neal to step out and guard her. So Carayannopoulos attacked off the dribble.
“Catie stepped up in a big way,” McKeon said.
Bayonne led at halftime, 26–21, but Westfield fought to within 1 point, 36–35, at the end of the third quarter. Then Bayonne sank basically all of its free throws. And that was it.
The Blue Devils and the Bees met last year in the sectional semifinals, a 64–48 Westfield win. Roster turnover gave Bayonne an edge this time—the Bees gained Meyers, who previously played at Hudson Catholic, and Westfield lost two starters. Westfield finished the season 20-7 (10-2 UCC Watchung).
At the end, the tears flowed, the sobs began. “These kids,” McKeon said, “they just mean the world to me. And they work so hard, and they’ve done such an amazing job to put our program on the map.”
And so it ended, in Bayonne, on a sunny but chilly February day, a team’s legacy cemented even in defeat.
“We just needed to believe,” McKeon said of Westfield’s grabbing the lead in the third quarter.
And so they did. They always did. All the way to the end.
Written by Michael Liebermann
Live tweeting by Drew Kornfeld
