Late Parsippany Surge Falls Short Against West Essex

It took nearly 28 minutes until girls basketball head coach Mark Gnapp found his team play its game.

Unfortunately for the Red Hawks, they were so far behind, make that 16 points, that the comeback that cut into the West Essex lead to three with 30 seconds left, was just a little too late.

For the second year in a row, Parsippany saw its aspirations for a North Jersey Section 2, Group II title go up in smoke in North Caldwell as the fifth-seeded Red Hawks dropped a 58-53 decision on Friday night to the top-seeded Knights.

"The way we played in the last four minutes of the game is way we have played all of season and is how I want us to play," said Gnapp, whose team finished the season with a 15-8 record.

While Parsippany managed to win two state tournament games this year after losing to the Knights in the quarterfinals last season, it was still short of the Red Hawks' goal.

"I really thought we were going to win tonight," said Gnapp, whose team came out slow and were down 8-3 in the first couple of minutes. "We came out flat and looked scared. We had a lot of unforced errors." 

Parsippany point guard Kayla Picinich led the way with 15 points and spearheaded the Red Hawks' offense that was plagued by foul trouble through the entire second half.

"She's got a lot of heart," Gnapp said of the senior guard.

In addition to Picinich, Ashley Burroughs added 10 and Kelsey Principe chipped in nine points for Parsippany.

Considering three Parsippany girls were in foul trouble as early as the third quarter and Alyssa Kastrunis injured her elbow, the Red Hawks were still in the game late in the fourth quarter.

Parsippany was behind for the entire game and saw its hole grow larger in the fourth quarter as the Red Hawks were down 47-31 with a little more than four minutes left in the game.

A struggling Burroughs though woke up in the final minutes that included a pair of 3-pointers as Parsippany started to creep up on West Essex. "She just struggled for most of the game," Gnapp said.

Picinich's 3-pointer from the left baseline made it a five-point Knights lead, 54-49 and then a Burroughs basket inside the paint sliced the West Essex lead to three, 54-51, with 30 seconds left in the game.

With Parsippany needing to foul, West Essex's Theresa Carnevale put the game away from the foul line, connecting on all four of her attempts.

Carnevale and Amanda Tiritilli led the way for the Knights the whole game. Carnevale was a perfect 16-for-16 from the line in the game and finished with 18 points, while Tiritilli chipped in with 14.

"We were supposed to not let Carnevale and Tiritilli get open," Gnapp said. "We did a bad job at that."