Early in the season, City's girls basketball didn't have a lot of cohesion with a mixture of veterans and transfer players, but they've come together as the season has gone on.
That teamwork, along with strong rebounding and hot 3-point shooting, earned the No. 14 Knights a significant road victory Wednesday as they head toward postseason. The 53-50 upset of No. 6 Patterson Mill in Bel Air snapped a nine-game winning streak by the Huskies (16-4), who were playing without senior point guard Sam Herman, sidelined with a shoulder injury.
City (12-5) won its fifth straight game, a run that includes a two-point win over No. 10 Western that avenged an early season loss.
"As a team, we wanted to win this game. It meant a lot to us," said Knights senior guard Daisha Madden. "I think we have good chemistry together and once we put our heads together we can get the job done even though it's a lot of new players. We all played our roles and did what we needed to do to come up with a 'W' at the end."
City used their height advantage to dominate inside and 6-foot forward Nkeiruka Okororie had 20 points and 15 rebounds.
"They killed us off offensive rebounds and putbacks," said Huskies coach Holly Ismail. "I thought our initial defense was good, but they had at least 50 pounds on each girl except Qalea [Ismail] and they could come over the back for the rebounds and finish the job."
In a game that was rescheduled from The Basketball Academy at Morgan State last month, neither team managed much momentum. The biggest lead came late in the second quarter when Patterson Mill led by five. That lasted less than a minute and neither team led by more than three after that.
The second half started with ties at 36 and 38, but each team went on a couple of mini-runs and each team led by three twice in the half.
City's Shantajah Marshall gave her team a 41-38 lead on one of her four 3-pointers. With 1:30 left, the Huskies took a 50-47 lead on Khayla Mitchell's layup, but they couldn't get any rebounds on the next series as Marshall missed two 3-point attempts and Alanica Bell and Yasmine Clayton grabbed the rebounds. Clayton took hers back up, cutting the lead to 50-49 with one minute to go.
City then took advantage of a couple Patterson Mill turnovers. Marshall turned one into a 3-pointer with 35 seconds left and when the Huskies turned it over again with 10 seconds left, Ismail was forced to foul Madden, who hit the front end of the one-and-one. Ismail got the rebound but Madden stole it back.
Madden missed the next shot and the Huskies took over with 5.1 seconds to go. Holly Ismail called a time out to set up a play, but the Knights unintentionally fouled Qalea Ismail on the inbound pass. That worked to City's advantage because Ismail missed the free throw and Okororie got the rebound.
"I think they played hard. They played hard defense," City coach George Petrides said of his players. "They played really well on Ismail and our bigs under the boards, they really played well. We tried to go inside a lot and the guards did a good job of getting the ball to the bigs."
The Huskies' inside struggles got worse when forward Chyna Latimer landed in foul trouble and had to sit for long stretches before fouling out with 6:48 left. Ismail, who was double or triple teamed most of the game, led Patterson Mill with 19 points.