ONEONTA - The best girls' basketball regular season in Unadilla Valley history was capped by the program's first-ever conference championship Saturday afternoon at Oneonta State's Alumni Field House.
Buoyed by the school's two all-time leading scorers, the Storm ran their record to 15-1 beating Unatego 44-34.
Fourth-year players Jordan Anderson and Amanda Off led UV with 17 and 13 points respectively. Anderson moved into second place on the scoring list late in the second quarter, while Off grabbed the number one spot in the club's most recent victory, a MAC semifinal decision over B-G.
In what has become a template for success this season, UV needed to take some early lumps before it settled in. Unatego's Kayla Talbot guided a 19-footer into the net, and 6-foot-1 junior Marissa Woodard netted a pair of inside buckets for the 8-0 lead.
Citing her players’ nerves, the eight-point deficit was okay with UV head coach Brandi Backus. "Sometimes that's what we need," Backus said. "The same thing happened at Unatego and at Harpursville. This group did not get rattled at all."
It was a safe bet that UV would find a way to get back in the game, but not many would have predicted the ease with which it glided by the usually-tough Unatego defense.
Off had the only two buckets for the Storm in their lowest scoring first quarter this season, and the first deuce didn't come until 2 1/2 minutes remained in the opening stanza.
From that opening bucket, UV went on a 20-3 full-out blitz, and that included a 16-1 stretch to start the second quarter. Anderson weighed heavily during UV’s dominant period. She pulled up from behind the three-point arc, and with no defender in range, stroked in a three ball. Anderson went the traditional three-point-play route on a patented drive to the basket later in the quarter, and had 10 of UV’s 18 points in the quarter. Off also had a pair of buckets as the UV lead moved to 20-11 at one point.
Unatego closed the quarter on a 7-2 run with a Casey Manzanero three sparking the spurt, but the four-point deficit at halftime was as close as the Spartans came.
"Once we got into the flow of the game, we did pretty well," Anderson said. "We just knew this was going to be our year."
Manzanero and UV's Taylor Davis starred in the previous outing between these two clubs, a 55-52 UV win. Manzanero had just seven points Saturday, 20 shy of the previous meeting, while Davis had just five, 13 below the earlier contest.
Unatego could have used a few more points from Manzanero, while the Storm proved it has plenty of scoring options other than Davis. The Storm quickly upped their lead to nine in the third quarter when Jen Elliott hit back-to-back buckets, the latter a three from the corner.
