The New Mission girls’ basketball team secured a spot in the Boston City League title game with a 45-31 semifinal win over Latin Academy at Madison Park’s Dennis Wilson Court Wednesday afternoon.
New Mission (15-4) will meet Fenway in the championship Thursday at 5 p.m. Fenway (16-3) routed O’Bryant in the other semifinal, 60-25.
After defeating Latin Academy earlier in the season, 65-19, New Mission entered this matchup expecting an easy path to the championship, but its relaxed approach almost proved costly. Latin Academy chipped away at a 17-point lead, cutting the deficit to 2 with five minutes to play.
“I feel like we basically needed to pick up our energy,’’ said New Mission senior captain Denia Davis-Stewart. “We started the game totally dead.
“We came out already having the mind-set on winning, but I feel like we didn’t show it and put all the effort forth into it. But when it came down to crunch time, I feel like we stepped up.’’
New Mission was up, 15-0, after one quarter and led by the same margin at halftime, 26-11. Latin Academy rode a 7-0 run into the fourth quarter to bring the game within 8 points. The Dragons opened the final frame with three straight baskets and trailed, 33-31.
“We have a game plan that we try to stick to and we got a little rattled,’’ said New Mission coach Mitchell Hercule. “Great job to Latin Academy on that, but at the end we pulled it back together, played defense, got our stops.’’
Stewart stopped the bleeding for New Mission with a layup, and junior guard Taneja Drayton followed with a 3-pointer. New Mission closed out the contest with 12 straight points.
Drayton led the Titans with 16 points. Senior guard Maia Daugherty scored 9 and Davis-Stewart chipped in with 8.
In the regular-season matchup, New Mission defeated Fenway, 64-54.
“They’re a great team — we know them, they know us,’’ Hercule said. “They’ll be ready, we’ll be ready, so it should be a good one.’’
Fenway sophomore guard Shania Tarver scored on the first possession of the game, and the Panthers never looked back. Fenway led, 20-2, after one quarter and pushed the lead to 23 points at halftime.
“We’ve run various defenses, we just move our defense according to what our opponent will present for us,’’ Fenway coach John Rice said. “We played this team twice before so we just wanted to really do some things to get us prepared and then kind of back off.’’
Senior cocaptains Jaqualah Holliman and Takora McIntyre had no problem tearing through O’Bryant’s zone defense, carrying Fenway with 14 points each. Sophomore forward Me’ara Carter added 10 and Tarver finished with 8.
“Because they were in zone, we moved the ball and we kept moving the ball to just get better shots,’’ Holliman said. “We saw each other. It was good chemistry on the court.’’
