The Martin girls’ varsity basketball team just might be be the youngest high school outfit in the state, and it shows.
The Lady Clippers have seven freshmen on the varsity, most of whom show flashes of brilliance and then terrible lapses on offense and defense. The result is inconsistency, but local fans might be treated to quite a show in a couple of years as they mature on the hardcourt.
Martin now sports a season record of 4-8 after a 53-49 loss Friday evening to visiting Marcellus. With only two minutes to go, the Clippers went ahead 48-47 on a baseline jumper by freshman pivot Faith Guritz, but blew a couple of chances to go up by three. The Lady Wildcats sealed the deal with 12 seconds showing on the clock with a pair of free throws by pivot Jade Sibley. They added insult to injury just before the buzzer on a steal and layup by Olivia Wildes.
Sibley was a proverbial thorn in the side of Martin all night, with her rebounding, scoring inside and she made 10 of her 11 free throw attempts. But she’s a senior playing against a lot of freshmen.
The two squads played evenly throughout the first period, but the Lady Clippers went into an offensive funk, scoring only on a basket by Guritz and a couple of free throws to fall behind 27-16 at intermission. Then in the third quarter they played as well as they had played poorly in the second.
Martin came out of the halftime locker room and scored 12 unanswered points, many of them on the fast break engineered by freshman point guard Jacklyn Hildebrand. She came up with a three-point play on one of her breaks. She and her teammates were fashioning a tough full-court press that picked up Wildcat miscues and turning them into points.
So the combatents went back into a tight contest, with neither team taking more than a three-point lead until the Clippers played a local version of “Dare to Be Great” by reeling off consecutive points by Hanna Dillenbeck, Hildebrand and Kiaya Warner to mount a 44-39 advantage with just under five minutes left.
But Martin would score only five points the rest of the way, all by Guritz.
Guritz, who has scored in double figures in every ballgame this season but one, led the Clippers with 15 points. Hildebrand added 10 and Warner nine.
PHOTOS: Faith Guritz
Jacklyn Hildebrand (15) finds the going tough underneath the basket.
