Ridgefield Girls Basketball Routs New Canaan 51-33 To Reach FCIAC Title Game

For the first time in more than a decade, the Ridgefield girls basketball team will play for the County championship.

The Tigers shut down New Canaan 3-point specialist Sarah Mannelly in the second half and routed the Rams 51-33 Tuesday night at Webster Bank Arena to advance to the FCIAC title game for the first time since 1996.

Ridgefield, the No. 2 seed, will take on top seed Trumbull in Thursday's final at 7 p.m. in Bridgeport. The Eagles dethroned defending FCIAC champion St. Joseph 57-46 in Tuesday's other semifinal.

The Tigers avenged a 67-61 loss at New Canaan on Jan. 28, a game in which Mannelly scored a career-high 37 points. Ridgefield certainly keyed on her in the rematch.

"That was our main focus, to stop her," said Emily Favorite, who scored 14 points for the Tigers. "We knew she couldn't go left and that's how we stopped her. We just played on her left side."

In the first half, though, the Tigers (18-4) didn't have much success containing the junior guard who displayed her usual outstanding range.

Despite being double-teamed by Favorite and Kathryn Cholko, Mannelly single-handedly kept the Rams in the game. She made four 3-pointers and tallied 17 points by the intermission.

In the second half, Ridgefield coach Katie Smith put Lauren Eckstrom on Mannelly, and the Tigers turned a close game into a rout. New Canaan's high-scoring point guard managed only two points over the final 16 minutes.

Mannelly scored New Canaan's first nine points of the game with her free throw giving the Rams (16-6) their only lead of the night at 9-8 with 4:09 left in the first quarter.

Ridgefield responded with a 10-2 run, opening an 18-11 lead on Eckstrom's jumper from the top of the key in the final seconds of the first quarter.

Mannelly rallied the Rams, hitting a pair of 3-pointers to pull New Canaan within 23-21 with two minutes left in the half. Cholko's steal and layup at the buzzer staked the Tigers to a 27-21 lead at the break.

In the second half, Ridgefield's defense made the difference. Mannelly couldn't get any open looks and scored her only points on a layup late in the fourth quarter after the contest was out of reach.

"I think that we realized that she knew that we were trying to force her to the left, so she kept shooting," said Cholko, who finished with 13 points. "We realized we had to get closer to her, then we blocked off her shot and drive."

New Canaan was limited to only three points in the third quarter. Ridgefield used a 12-0 run late in the first half to build a 35-21 lead on Favorite's layup less than two minutes into the second half.

The Tigers opened their biggest advantage at 49-29 on Gemma Howard's layup with 2:18 left in the contest.

"Ridgefield did a good job of taking us out of what we wanted to do defensively and we sort of got stuck in the mud offensively," New Canaan coach Kim Palmer said. "They did a good job defensively on Sarah Mannelly."

Ridgefield simply had more weapons as Mannelly scored more than half of her team's total. For a while, it looked as if she was trying to beat the Tigers by herself.

"Anyone can come off the bench and do a great job," Cholko said. "We have no one star. Any person can put up points. We don't have one person to shut down. We have the whole team. We play as a team."

Ridgefield is seeking its third FCIAC title, winning its previous crowns in 1992 and 1996. New Canaan was looking to reach the FCIAC finals for the first time in school history.