BY MATT STOUT
As Kelley Flynn stood at the foul line with 13.4 seconds to play in the Hopkinton girls basketball team’s Class M quarterfinal match-up with Newport on Sunday, Feb. 25, it all came flooding back.
The disappointment the Hawks felt a year ago in a semifinal loss to Newport, the rivalry that had grown between the two teams, the feeling that the Hawks deserved this win – it all went through Flynn’s mind as she prepared to possibly give her team a tie or the lead with the Hawks down 35-34 at Plymouth State’s Foley Gym.
Moments later, all that heartbreak Hopkinton hoped to erase was gone, replaced by a new kind.
Each of Flynn’s shots missed the mark, the Hawks missed a top-of-the-key three-pointer in the waning seconds and top-seeded Newport hit all four of its free throws down the stretch to earn a 39-34 win in front of 435 fans and the right to play in the tournament semifinals.
Flynn and teammate Lily Smith scored 14 points apiece and grabbed 19 and 12 rebounds, respectively, but their contributions and the intensity eighth-seeded Hopkinton displayed throughout the game weren’t enough to hold off Newport, which extended its record to 20-0.
“A lot of it was thinking about last year and how bad we wanted to be there and how much we deserved it,” a teary-eyed Flynn said of her mindset while preparing to shoot her foul shots. “We were up the whole game and ... it sucked.”
For Hopkinton, it was a painful ending to what had become a season marked by resiliency.
After giving Newport its closest game in a 46-43 loss on Dec. 8, Hopkinton continually played through injuries, including a 72-34 loss at Newport on Jan. 26 when Flynn was out with a broken nose.
Thereafter, the Hawks returned their full lineup and won six straight, including a 47-38 decision over Campbell in the first round of the tournament on Thursday, Feb. 22.
That set up Sunday’s rematch, where the Hawks, which finished at 12-8, held the lead into the third period before the Tigers reclaimed it at 26-24 entering the fourth.
Hopkinton stormed back from what had grown into a five-point deficit roughly five minutes later with eight straight points from Smith to make it 34-33 with 1:09 to play. Newport’s Abbie Kennedy hit a lay-up with 30.6 seconds remaining, setting up Flynn’s free throws on the other end.
After the second shot missed, Flynn was forced to foul, earning the University of Richmond-bound center her fifth. After Newport hit two free throws, Hannah Richard’s three-pointer with under five seconds to play hit high off the backboard, off the rim and into the grasp of a Tigers forward.
“We expected it,” Newport coach Doug Beaupre said of the close game. “When Kelley Flynn is in their lineup, that’s the kind of game we had the last two years. This may have been the largest margin of victory we had against them (with her playing).”
As a group, Hopkinton kept the usually free-shooting Tigers largely at bay. Newport, which hit eight straight fourth-quarter threes to beat the Hawks in last year’s playoffs, hit 3-of-21 on Sunday.
“We knew that we deserved to be there, and despite the ups and downs of our season, we had people injured, but we really deserved to be up in that final four,” said Flynn. “But it didn’t happen.”