HUDSON – It could have been the Hudson girls basketball team’s last home game this season – and the team certainly made it count.
On Tuesday afternoon, the No. 26 Hawks opened playoff action with a preliminary-round matchup against the No. 39 Lowell Catholic Crusaders. With the team’s season hanging in the balance, Hudson prevailed and won the contest 63-42. The Hawks will now advance to the Round of 32 in the MIAA Division 3 tournament.
The Hawks led the Crusaders, 15-9, after one quarter. Hudson eventually found their form, but it took some time for the team to settle into the game.
“I think we always go in a little bit nervous, but we do the same thing every game. We have the same routine. We always warm up at the same spots… When that goes right, everything else goes right,” senior Lila Rice said after the game.
“It’s the playoffs. That reality didn’t set in until tonight – even though you talk about it. When you’re coming in, you start to replay your whole career here all of a sudden, and you realize that this is the last game you’re probably ever going to play here. That all plays into it. You can talk about it as much as you want, but you have to deal with it. It’s easy to get distracted,” Hudson Head Coach Marty Murphy told the Community Advocate.
Once the team’s nerves had settled, Hudson came out firing for the rest of the game. Hudson’s Sam Collette led the scoring with 19 points, including 12 in the final quarter. Anna Iacobucci tallied 15 points, while Daria Giorgi Woodford added another 7. The Hawks couldn’t miss in the fourth quarter, nailing four 3-point shots to take control of the game.
Lowell Catholic, despite trailing significantly, fought until the end. Janae Holmes led the Crusaders with 17 points, with Meredith Morey adding 9. Miley Lopez tacked on another 7 points for Lowell Catholic.
With the game in hand, Hudson honored the team’s four seniors – Collette, Rice, Audrey Lenox and Leila Mullahy – in what was likely their final career game at Hudson High School. Murphy substituted the seniors out one-by-one throughout the final minutes of the game, allowing each player to enter the limelight, get recognized and hear the crowd in the packed Hudson bleachers applaud.
“The seniors are a huge part of the culture and turnaround here. They mean a lot to me,” Murphy explained. “I felt like taking them off one by one gives them the recognition. Right now, that crew of kids combined is 51-18. That’s amazing, and they deserve to be able to come off the floor like that.”
“It was nice to hear everyone cheering, and I felt very loved. It was nice after five years to come off like that,” said Collette.
Hudson will face seventh-seeded Sandwich in the Round of 32. Although Sandwich is currently 19-1 and was dominant over the course of the season, Murphy emphasized that only one record matters going into the matchup: Hudson is 1-0, and Sandwich – which has yet to play in the postseason – is 0-0. Anything could happen.
“We’ve got to play a team that is ahead of us in the rankings. That doesn’t matter at this point,” Murphy said.
The date and time of the Round of 32 contest has not yet been determined.
