City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADrobinson3)
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BUCKINGHAM >> Her teammates had done their share, so Anna Barry was ready to bring them home.

Facing another opponent determined to minimize her impact, the CB East junior guard was noticeably absent from the scorebook for much of Tuesday night’s SOL crossover tilt with visiting Council Rock South. When it mattered most however, there was Barry putting in all eight of her points in the fourth quarter and overtime and getting right in the mix on a pair of pivotal defensive stops.

Barry showed why she’s been the focus of so much attention and the Patriots showed they’ve got a pretty solid team around her as they downed the Golden Hawks 56-50.

“I always try to attack, especially the end of a game when I know we need buckets,” Barry said. “We were down, but it was a great team win the way we were able to come back and win at the end.”

Barry’s progression at East has followed a pretty linear path, but that’s not a bad thing as the 5-foot-5 guard has gotten better and better with each passing season. As a freshman, she had a pretty defined role on a veteran-laden team that included her older sister Emily, Mia Salvati and current Chestnut Hill College post Emily Chmiel as seniors as the go-to shooter off the bench.

Last season, with East retooling after a District 1 semifinal run the year before, Barry moved into the starting five and proved she could score other ways beyond a smooth outside shot. There were also flashes late in the season that she could be a factor on the other end of the floor.

Now 10 games into her junior year, Barry has evolved into a two-way player, her defense helping get things done on a night where the opposing team is throwing out all the stops to take away her scoring.

“I feel that way, each year my coaches would always tell me I could improve on the defensive end so that’s what I’ve been working on up to this year,” Barry said. “I’ve been focusing on the defensive end, zoning in on stopping my girl and boxing out on every possession because that can be what wins the game.”

Barry, who plays AAU for the Fencor organization alongside Lansdale Catholic sharpshooter Olivia Boccella and SOL Colonial rivals in North Penn’s Liv Stone and Kelly Donnelly among others, said she challenged herself this summer trying to defend opposing point guards. She’s backed it up this season, on Tuesday helping to force a key over-and-back turnover in overtime and jumping in to help get another turnover late in regulation.

East coach Liz Potash, now in her 10th year leading the Patriots, isn’t surprised that Barry is drawing so much attention or that she's making plays on the defensive side of the ball. East’s foundation is the defensive side of the ball, Tuesday was a high-scoring game by their standards, and by the end of last season, Potash pointed out Barry was locking down top options on a nightly basis.

“It’s so different for her this year because every team is keying on her, we’re seeing defenses against her that we’ve never seen,” Potash said. “To her credit, it’s not stopping her one bit. She fully understands what to do to get her teammates open, she hit that huge shot in overtime to take the lead and on the defensive end, it’s something she’s worked on over the last two years to the point we can put her on whoever we need because she’s become such a strong defender.”

It wasn’t a bad idea by any stretch for the Golden Hawks to try and take Barry out of the game offensively. The junior guard was named the MVP of Interboro’s holiday tournament last week and possesses the kind of range and rhythm where one shot is enough to get her going.

Having a defender - on Tuesday it was a healthy dose of Liliana Metrick and Lily Bross - glued to her every move is a bit of a new development this season and certainly challenging. Potash said the first time Barry saw that intensive level of face-guarding was their game against Pennridge where the Rams stuck Anna Croyle on Barry and held her scoreless.

The result didn’t favor East either, with Pennridge escaping with a 44-43 win and Potash had to spend some extra time showing Barry what she had provided without her points so that the next time, it wouldn’t faze her.

“We scored 43 points, she scored zero and we lost by one, so we told her, ‘look at the good stuff,’” Potash said. “She’s setting good screens, she’s making contact and getting her teammates wide open. That gives us a lot of confidence, let her draw the attention because we have kids that complement her and as soon as they start hitting shots, it opens things up for Anna.”

Tuesday, with Barry held to just four shot attempts through three quarters, the Patriots needed those complementary players. First, they had to slow down a Golden Hawks team that was flying up and down the floor and thriving in transition, running out to a 24-15 lead midway through the second quarter.

Then, East needed points. Those came in the form of seniors Erin LeRay and Kendall Gregor, who combined for an 11-0 run that closed the first half and turned a deficit into a 26-24 lead at the break.

LeRay, a guard, took advantage of some of the lanes Barry left in her wake moving off the ball and finished with 10 points and just as impressively, 13 rebounds while Gregor, a post, flashed plenty of her inside-out game with a game-high 18 points.

“Our guards really picked it up and got up on them and we showed what we can do with our size and rebounding,” Gregor said. “I try to have a variety to my game so I’m not a one-dimensional kind of player.”

“I try to use it to my advantage,” Barry said. “I can get my teammates open when they’re guarding me and if they’re not helping off of me, it means other people are going to be open. I love how everyone is stepping up and I love seeing all of my teammates playing really well.”

Barry’s first score didn’t come until the 6:22 mark of the fourth quarter on a baseline drive, adding a pair of free throws in the final minute of regulation. Her biggest play of the game came two minutes into overtime, when she used a ball-fake, drove past one defender and lofted the shot over a second for a lead the Patriots wouldn’t give back.

Outside the program this might look like a breakout season of sorts for Barry, who doesn’t have any formal college offers yet but has talked with a handful of Division II and III programs, but it’s what Potash had expected to see for a long time. The East coach recalled when Anna, who had tagged along with her sister Emily to a practice, jumped in as a fourth grader and held her own in the varsity drills.

The long-range shooting is eye-catching but it was the way Barry scored the go-ahead basket that had her coach adamant her best is still yet to come.

“She has this change of speed, it’s not the change of speed where she’s going zero to 60 but it’s a hesitation where she can make a slight move, adjust and go by and she does it in a way that’s hard to defend,” Potash said. “You don’t really expect it and I tell the girls all the time, it’s not the quickest player but the smartest player and she’s so smart, she reads things, she’s things that are there and it’s a credit to her.”

Metrick led CR South with 15 points, the Hawks also getting nine from Katie Purpura and seven from senior Karissa Smedley. Looking at a two-point deficit with just seconds on the clock, point guard Kathryn O’Kane had one of the best plays of the game, charging to the rim and having her aggression rewarded with a layup that dropped before the buzzer to force overtime.

In the extra session, East’s Chantal Van Dongeren came in clutch, scoring four points and securing three of her 11 rebounds.

“The defensive intensity really picked up in overtime,” LeRay, who sat the last few possessions after tweaking an ankle but watched her twin sister Shayne come up with two big steals, said. “We have a lot of seniors and juniors on the team, we all decided we wanted to win the game.”

“It really shows our maturity,” Barry said. “Everyone can step up, usually it’s a different person each night and it’s really impressive. I love being on a team where my teammates can step up around me, it really helps me so much.”

By Quarter
CB East:    10  |  16  |   9   |  10  |  11  ||  56
CR South: 16  |   8   |  13  |   8   |   5   ||  50

Scoring
CBE: Kendall Gregor 18, Erin LeRay 10, Anna Barry 8, Chantal Van Dongeren 7, Natalie Berndt 8, Shayne LeRay 5

CRS: Liliana Metrick 15, Katie Purprua 9, Karissa Smedley 7, Cam Gregory 6, Kathryn O’Kane 6, Fiona Reckner 4, Jess Mangoni 3