Southampton Girls Basketball Team's Season Ends After Loss In County Semifinal

If there’s one thing the Southampton girls basketball team is no stranger to, it’s adversity. The Mariners, especially the senior class, have gone through quite a bit throughout the years, and they had another hurdle to clear prior to their Suffolk County Class B semifinal game at Center Moriches on February 16.

Due to extensive road work near the Shinnecock Canal on Sunrise Highway, Southampton walked into the Center Moriches High School gym at about 7:15 p.m., an hour after the expected tip-off. But as the team has done in the past, including this season, it cleared yet another hurdle and led the host Red Devils early in the second quarter.

That lead, though, wound up being short lived, as Center Moriches went on a torrid 20-0 run that stretched into the third quarter and it wound up being the difference. The Red Devils defeated the Mariners, 58-30, and advanced to the Class B county championship, where it lost to top-seeded Greenport/Southold, 41-30.

Southampton head coach Richard “Juni” Wingfield said after the game he didn’t think his team suffered from the long two-hour bus ride before the game or the delayed start. He gave credit to Center Moriches for making adjustments from the first two times the teams played each other during the regular season.

“If you have jet lag, it shows in the first quarter. We didn’t have jet lag,” he said. “Center Moriches made nice adjustments when they went to a one-three-one zone. That caused us problems and then we were in foul trouble.”

Fouls started becoming an issue early in Center Moriches’s second-quarter run, starting with a technical foul given to Southampton freshman Daelyn Palmore. Then with 55.9 seconds remaining in the first half, senior co-captain Carli Cameron committed her fourth foul. Being one call away from fouling out of the game completely, Cameron basically had to let a Center Moriches player score unabated on a steal and fast break layup in the final minute instead of pressuring her.

With 5:15 remaining in the third quarter, senior co-captain Maddie Taylor ended her team’s scoring drought, but by that time Center Moriches already led, 31-17. And less than a minute later, senior co-captain Gabby Arnold committed her fourth foul, and not long after that, Taylor committed her fourth.

“When we play aggressive and assertive and we get kids in foul trouble, we can’t do anything,” Wingfield said. “It was like a matador in a bull fight, didn’t even touch them. There’s nothing we can do, we can’t play like that. The kids were trying to save themselves. When you have kids with three or four fouls on them, it puts a real damper on things.”

Again, Wingfield gave credit to Center Moriches for deploying a one-three-one zone defense, a strategy he said the Red Devils never used against his team in the two games during the regular season. He said they had used a “flat three-two zone,” but Center Moriches did its homework as Southampton has struggled against the one-three-one in the past.

“Babylon has taught us that through the years, it’s one of the hardest defenses, and we do everything to prepare for it but we struggle a lot against that little one-three-one,” Wingfield said.

Wingfield also said it was no coincidence that his team struggled offensively. Much of its success has been predicated on defense and the numbers certainly bore that out. The Mariners averaged close to 41 points per game this season, and only allowed 36 points per game, one of the top teams in the county in that regard.

“We gave up 58 points tonight — you can’t give up that many if we weren’t keeping teams in that 40 range. It was just who we were,” he said. “We weren’t going to have that kind of offensive power. That kind of thing on a night like tonight, it kind of caught us.”

Wingfield gave credit to his players for playing hard, going 12-7 overall throughout the season and for coming within a game of going to the county championship. Now he has to say goodbye to a handful of seniors, particularly Taylor, Arnold and Cameron, all starters who played on varsity for multiple years, with Taylor leading the way in that sense having played for five years.

They will all have the accolades to show for a strong season too: Taylor was named All-County, All-Conference and All-League, Arnold was All-League, Cameron was All-League and All-Academic, Hallie Beeker was All-Academic, Juliette Archer was named the team’s Unsung Hero and Palmore was named Co-League VII Rookie of the Year with Port Jefferson’s Camryn Spiller.

“Their resumés speak for themselves,” Wingfield said of his players. “I think that most of all, even as I wrote them a message today, at the end of the day, they know my philosophy — you sometimes in life have to get past the winning and losing and make sure you get the victory, and full effort is full victory. They’ll leave here tonight knowing they had full effort — full effort is full victory. I’ve tried to teach that all my life. That’s why games are the way they are, they win and lose, you win some, you lose some.”