Malverne holds off East Rockaway

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Malverne and East Rockaway renewed their long-standing rivalry on the basketball court on Jan. 4 with the Lady Mules seeking their first conference victory, and the visiting Lady Rocks looking to rebound from a narrow defeat at the hands of Lynbrook.

As usual, the battle for Ocean Avenue bragging rights didn’t disappoint. Keyeria Dawson scored a career-high 26 points, including 11 in the third quarter, and registered six steals to lead the Lady Mules to a 51-49 victory in Nassau Conference ABC. Senior Alessia Drevnyak scored 24 points to lead East Rockaway, which fell to 4-4.

Trailing 46-32 after three quarters, the Lady Rocks mounted a furious comeback. Juliet McCarthy (14 points) hit back-to-back threes to open the final quarter, and fellow sophomore Brooke DeGiulio scored six straight points to lead the fourth-quarter surge. DeGiulio finished with 10 points.

Drevnyak hit a pair of free throws to cut Malverne’s lead to 50-48 with 23.5 seconds to play, but it was East Rockaway’s tough night at the foul line that proved to be the difference. The Rocks hit just nine of 18 from the line. Junior Alexis Lake had 15 points and 11 rebounds for Malverne.

Malverne head coach Lorenzo Jenkins was relieved that his team hung on. “I’ll take it, and I’ll enjoy it,” Jenkins said. “We have to play smarter, and we need to get better at finishing games off. We fight and show resilience, but our decision-making has to be better. I can’t complain about the effort. The girls played hard and never stopped working.”

It was a game of runs early on. Drevnyak scored the game’s first 10 points to get the Lady Rocks rolling, only to see the Lady Mules, who improved to 3-5, go on a 19-2 run that extended into the second quarter. Lake scored eight points in the opening quarter, six of which came on traditional three-point plays.

With the game slipping away, East Rockaway head coach Karin Leary went to a box-and-one, and junior Rachel O’Hagan made things more than difficult for Dawson, holding her to just two points over the final 11 minutes. With O’Hagan pressuring the senior guard, and Drevnyak swatting away shot after shot in the paint, the Lady Rocks put themselves in position to pull off a come-from-behind victory. But, it was not to be.  

“We got the shot we were looking for, but it just didn’t fall,” Leary said. “We’ve got to get better on the boards, and can’t make that many turnovers. We threw the ball away entirely too much. I think the girls got a little comfortable when we went up 10-0 to start the game. We started playing like we had the game won in the first quarter. We know we can play better than we did tonight.”

The Lady Rocks are back home to face Locust Valley on Thursday at 7:15 p.m. The Lady Mules welcome in Oyster Bay on Friday at 7 p.m.