It's not so much that St. John Villa lost.
It's how it lost that stings.
The Bears struggled from start-to-finish offensively and despite staying within striking distance until the end, they never found a rhythm as they suffered a 35-27 CHSAA Archdiocesan championship loss to visiting Cardinal Spellman on Saturday in front of an SRO crowd in Arrochar.
Villa, which was attempting to win its first Archdiocesan title since the 2002-03 season, dropped to 17-10 overall.
Its season, however, is not over. By losing Saturday's title game, the Bears will now compete in the Catholic state A playoffs and meet St. Joseph's of Brooklyn in a semifinal game Friday at Holy Cross HS in Queens (7 p.m.).
Following impressive wins in the quarterfinal (Moore Catholic) and semifinal (Monsignor Scanlan) rounds, Villa coach Liz Blanchard was hoping to give the Villa crowd one last home victory as the Arrochar school is set to close in June. But unfortunately, unlike those first two games when they shot fairly well, the Bears shot an icy 15.7 percent from the field (9 for 57).
"The shots weren't falling and as the game went on, the kids started doubting themselves and then weren't looking to take shots,'' said Villa coach Liz Blanchard, whose team also shot 8 for 15 from the free-throw line. "We told them to keep shooting. And not necessarily from the outside ... we should have started to at least take higher percentage shots.
"Even if we couldn't get a layup (by driving), we could have pulled up for 10 or 12-foot jumpers (against their zone). We were looking for anything to give us some momentum.''
To its credit, Villa played a solid game defensively behind its 3-2, half-court zone, which helped force Spellman into a whopping 26 turnovers. The Bears also held their own on the boards against the bigger Pilots, who owned a 36-34 edge at game's end.
It's part of the reason why Blanchard's troops were not only in the game, but held a 22-19 lead with 2:24 left in the third quarter after Gianna Kroczynski hit 1 of 2 free throws, then a layup.
But that's when things started going south for the Bears, who would go the next 6:23 without a field goal. The Pilots, who started applying full-court pressure late in the third, went on a 10-1 run behind Amber Caputo (four points) to build a 30-23 lead.
"We played great defensively ... we took some charges and those things help you when you have an off night (offensively) like we did,'' said Blanchard. "But unfortunately, (the good defense) wasn't enough.''
Tiffany Smith finally broke the spell with a put back with 4:01 left in the game. The bucket cut the Bears' deficit to five, but they'd only score one more field goal the rest of the way.
"We were hoping for anything to get us rolling,'' Blanchard said. "We needed to score so we can get into our press, but even after we got that basket, we just couldn't get any momentum.''
Caputo scored again off the break, then Spellman (17-4) hit three free throws in the final 33.7 seconds to ice the victory, and the championship.
NOTES: Kroczynski scored a game-high 13 points for the Bears while Smith finished with eight. Shanice Sinclair (11 points) and Caputo (nine) paced Spellman, who played the game without leading scorer Devyn Elliot (high-ankle sprain). Elliot averages 18 ppg. ... Karina Robinson grabbed a game-high 14 rebounds for the Pilots. Freshman Jordan Welle (two blocks) led Villa with nine rebounds, but left the game with 6:05 left in the fourth period because of a knee injury ... Ivori Fogg took two chargers for Villa, while Hailey Hospodarek took another and drew an offensive foul (elbow) as well ... Villa committed just 10 turnovers.
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