By Dylan Butler
But Marty Towey doesn't think “cozy” when he heads inside the gym's cramped quarters. He thinks “claustrophobic.”The Archbishop Molloy coach said he's made his hatred of the gym known in league meetings and he didn't feel any better about Mary Louis' home court after the Hilltoppers' rallied for a 47-39 league win Friday night.”It's the most difficult because it changes the game totally,” Towey said of Mary Louis' gym. “When we play at our place, I guarantee it will be a different game. I'm not saying the outcome [will be different] but the game is not played with kids always stepping on the out of bounds line taking a pass. It's too small for varsity players.”It was Mary Louis' first win against Molloy since 2002.”If I welcome you into my house and it's not the Taj Mahal, it's still mine,” Mary Louis coach Joe Lewinger said. “We welcomed you and we're hospitable. We put them in the only facility we have. We don't have the luxury of having two gyms in our school.”Like her coach, Casey Shevlin doesn't share Towey's thoughts on the court.”I love playing here,” she said. “The excitement, the adrenaline and the crowd, it was the best game that I've ever played in.”And the Mary Louis junior guard showed how much she loved playing on her home court in a dominating second half. After scoring five points in the first half, the Hilltoppers' star guard finished with a game-high 22 points, including 10 points in a devastating 21-4 run.”I hit my first shot right off the bat in the second half and I just kept shooting,” she said.Led by Shevlin, Mary Louis (6-6, 1-2 CHSAA Division I) clinically picked apart Molloy's 2-3 zone in the third quarter, turning a 25-16 halftime deficit into a 37-32 lead by pushing the ball inside and then kicking it out for open jumpers on the wings.The Stanners finally switched to man-to-man at the start of the fourth quarter.”They kept finding the open person and our girls weren't jumping quick enough to the ball,” Towey said.Kerri White led Molloy (7-2, 2-1) with 12 points and her three-pointer 1:54 into the third quarter gave the Stanners a 28-16 lead. Lewinger looked down his bench to try and find the answer to stop White and he found it in reserve guard Amanda LeBron. The standout on Mary Louis' championship soccer team held White to just two points for the remainder of the game.”We've been going through a little bit of a hard time the last few games losing when we should have won. But today we knew we were playing Molloy, we knew they weren't going to be the team they were [last year],” LeBron said. “We just came out with confidence, which we were lacking the last few games, and we just rocked it.”Added Shevlin: “She's such a spark is what she is. She gets everybody going.”And what got LeBron going was the boisterous standing-room only crowd.”I love it,” she said. “It pumps us up.”Reach Sports Editor Dylan Butler by e-mail at TimesLedger@aol.com or call 718-229-0300, Ext. 143.
