This year’s Conant girls are truly something special, and they proved it one last time on Saturday, weathering everything Fall Mountain threw at them to complete their undefeated season with a 51-42 victory in the NHIAA Division III championship.
“This is definitely the way I wanted to go out, with a state title,” said Conant senior captain Silas Bernier on the floor of Keene State College’s Spaulding Gymnasium after the game, net around her neck and championship trophy in hand. “I worked hard to get here, my teammates worked hard to get here, we’ve been very fortunate to be here numerous times. We’re not new to the final four or the championship game, so we had experience on our side. But definitely, being a senior, playing your last tournament, it’s even more valuable and amazing.”
Bernier carried the No. 1 seeded Orioles (21-0) offensively through the playoffs to the title game, scoring 18 points a game (she’d averaged nine ppg in the regular season). But it wouldn’t be her scoring that brought home Conant’s division-record eighth state championship, as she couldn’t find the bottom of the net, finishing 1-13 from the floor.
“Nothing fell for me,” Bernier said. “Fortunately, however, I have a wide array of teammates that stepped up…We’re a very versatile team, it’s not one and done. It’s not just one girl that can get hot. If she’s not, we have five other shooters, we have great post play. We have a lot of aspects to our team, it’s great.”
Conant would need every one of those players to contribute, as No. 2 Fall Mountain – the last team to beat the Orioles before their now-21-game win streak, back in last year’s semifinals – came out with ferocity, the two regular-season losses by a combined 59 points just a distant memory.
“We were going to try to shoot our way in,” said Fall Mountain head coach Matthew Baird-Torney. “They pack it in, they stunt early and recover well, so we were going to have to let it fly.”
That simple game plan got even simpler once junior guard Sophie Bardis got her hands on the ball. Bardis was feeling it, hitting six three-pointers in the game, including two that banked in off the backboard, for a team-high 18 points. Bardis’ six threes set a new record for three-pointers made in a championship game, which was previously four, held by several including Conant’s Katie Chadbourne in 2015 (the Orioles’ last undefeated championship season).
“They were hitting all their shots,” said Conant junior captain Elizabeth Gonyea. “We kept switching under screens, which didn’t allow us to get our hands up and their three-point shooting kept them in the game.”
Gonyea, the Player of the Year frontrunner, did her part to keep Conant in the game, too; she’d end the first quarter with an acrobatic reverse layup at the buzzer to give the Orioles a 14-10 lead, and she finished the game with 12 points and four steals.
Teagan Kirby had nine points, six rebounds and three steals, Emma Tenters grabbed 11 rebounds and scored six points, and Mylie Aho had a key bucket, but the key to the game was freshman Brynn Rautiola’s emergence. Rautiola’s regular-season play was enough to show she was ready for the bright lights of the tournament; although she struggled a bit in the playoff opener against Campbell, her coming-out party was inevitable, and she picked the perfect time to show it.
“We knew that it was only a matter of time before she had a big game,” said Conant head coach Brian Troy, “and on the biggest of stages, for a freshman to do that is unbelievable.”
Rautiola played every minute of the game, went 3-4 from three-point land, and absorbed foul after foul down the stretch, hitting clutch free throws to ice the game.
“I just had to play my role, get stops on defense, hit shots on offense, get my teammates going,” Rautiola said. “They gave me great passes, that’s why I hit the shots.”
She finished with a team-high 16 points, the latest freshman to step up and contribute to a Conant championship.
“It’s amazing, it’s an indescribable feeling,” Rautiola said. “You just feel so accomplished. We’ve been working really hard, so it’s great to achieve what we’ve been working for all year.”
Conant absolutely demolished all comers in the regular season, beating teams by an average of 29 points per game, so executing in tight games down the stretch isn’t exactly second nature for the Orioles. But Fall Mountain was happy to push them out of their comfort zone. The lead changed hands eight times in the second half, and Conant was down 35-34 with six minutes left in the game.
The captains, Bernier and Gonyea, huddled their team, looked at the scoreboard and thought of their motto – “refuse to lose.” Bernier rallied her troops one more time.
“The thing she brings is heart,” Gonyea said. “She’s always got heart. She looked at us and said ‘We’re not going to lose this game.’ She left everything out there.”
Tenters grabbed an offensive board and kicked it to Gonyea, who put it in for two. From there, the Orioles wouldn’t surrender the lead again, despite the Wildcats’ valiant efforts.
“This team is resilient,” Troy said. “We always talk about bending, but not breaking. Good teams bend but they never break. They fought through. We knew we were going to have some tough games late in the playoffs. Words can’t say enough, I’m just so proud of them.”
Bernier goes out having appeared in the Final Four all four years of her career with three title game appearances and two championships.
“I am so happy for Silas,” Troy said. “We talked before the game about this being her last game and let’s make you go out a champion, because that’s what you’ve been the whole four years you’ve been here. She has been the heart and soul and the leader of this team, and I’m so proud of her.”