Connolly calm, cool, collected for Ursuline

Ursuline’s Maggie Connolly (2) runs with the ball in their win against Sanford in the DIAA girl’s basketball championship game at the University of Delaware.

Ursuline’s Maggie Connolly (2) runs with the ball in their win against Sanford in the DIAA girl’s basketball championship game at the University of Delaware.

Three quarters of solid basketball was about to go up in smoke for Ursuline.

Sanford’s Chrishyanah Alston was about to take the DIAA Girls Basketball Tournament championship away from the Raiders on Friday night.

And then, a sophomore stepped to the free-throw line. Three times. In the last 28.4 seconds.

Maggie Connolly made all six foul shots, and they added up to 16. Ursuline’s 16th state title.

“She has the three Cs,” Raiders coach John Noonan said. “She’s calm, she’s cool and she’s collected.

“You can’t get more pressure than that. A bucket game, a one-point game, and she goes and hits six in a row. And I don’t even know that she touched the rim.”

A free throw should be the easiest shot in basketball. Just 15 feet away, a straight shot, with nobody guarding you. But throughout the final three rounds of this year’s girls and boys state tournaments at the Bob Carpenter Center, free throws have been anything but free.

St. Georges made just 11 of 30 on Thursday night, and Sanford hit just 10 of 21. And those two boys teams won their semifinal games to set up a championship meeting here at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Ursuline holds off Sanford run to win state crown

Ursuline also struggled at the line on Wednesday, making just 9 of 16 in a 40-35 semifinal victory over Concord. Even Connolly hit just 2 of 5 that night. So Noonan tried to up the ante during Thursday’s practice.

“We practiced really, really hard on it yesterday,” the coach said. “We had coaches charting them as they were doing it, trying to put a little bit of pressure on them.”

The Warriors put a big bit of pressure on the Raiders. Trailing 28-17 entering the fourth quarter, Alston took over. The 5-foot-8 senior did everything possible in her final high school game, scoring nine points over the next 4½ minutes.

“Chrishyanah Alston just went off,” Noonan said. “She decided she was going to dominate, and she did.”

Sanford’s full-court press was at full bore, and when Taylor Samuels banked in a layup with 1:09 to play, the Warriors cut the lead to 33-32.

Then Connolly stepped to the line.

“It was a lot of noise,” she said. “I was just trying to block it out and focus on making the shot.”

She did, dropping the first pair with 28.4 seconds left. But Alston bulled her way in for another layup with 17 seconds to go, and it was a one-point game again.

Ursuline had to burn two timeouts to get the ball inbounds on the next possession, but it wound up with Connolly.

“I have all the confidence in the world in Maggie,” Ursuline senior Kailyn Kampert said. “She is so clutch, and she has proven that her whole career. As soon as she was holding the ball at the end of the game and they fouled her, I knew she was going to make them.”

She made two more, with 12.2 seconds to go, but that only gave the Raiders a 37-34 cushion. Sanford missed a potential tying 3-pointer, and Ursuline got the ball back to Connolly. She toed the line again with 2.8 seconds remaining.

“[Connolly] is about 100 percent from the free-throw line,” Ursuline senior Alyssa Irons said. “I had complete confidence in her.”

Actually, Noonan said Connolly is an 84-percent foul shooter this season. But the coach’s mind was racing through the final minute, focused on a lower number.

“What was going through my mind? Zeroes,” Noonan said. “Get that clock to zeroes.”

Connolly isn’t your typical sophomore. She has been contributing at Ursuline since the eighth grade, so this is really the midpoint of her high school career. She made two more, and the final score was Ursuline 39, Sanford 34. Start celebrating.

“It definitely takes some time to get used to, but this is my third year now doing it,” Connolly said. “I think the experience helped me.”

Everybody had confidence in her, and she delivered.

“She’s the one we want on the line,” Noonan said. “She’s money.”

Contact Brad Myers at bmyers@delawareonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @BradMyersTNJ.