WCAC Girls Semifinals: Good Counsel 66, Bishop McNamara 49

Good Counsel was never challenged by McNamara’s girls basketball team in Sunday’s WCAC semifinals, rolling to a 66-49 victory at American University.

And yet, Falcons senior Katie Sheahin wasn’t at all surprised by that.

“I would say we definitely put in the work in practice and it showed,” said Sheahin, who led Good Counsel with 18 points.

Sunday showed just how well the Falcons (25-3), winners of 17 straight games, can perform when their game is clicking.

The Falcons will now play in their second straight WCAC finals Monday against Holy Cross after the Mustangs upended them in last year’s title game.

The team’s seniors are on a quest to win their own WCAC championship after sitting on the bench as freshman when Good Counsel won the title.

“Wanting to go to the championship one more time, there was a feeling inside that we had to get the W,” senior Sarian Snyder said.

The Falcons said they were especially focused before the game. The team went to Good Counsel’s gym to shoot around early Sunday morning and loudly prayed in the locker room before the game.

“It’s hard to explain,” sophomore Boo Abshire said. “It was just intense.”

Good Counsel, who split with McNamara in the regular season, has often struggled at the starts of games this season, but not as much recently. The came out strong against O’Connell in Saturday’s quarterfinals and did so once again Sunday.

The Falcons hit their shots early, building a 16-point lead in the first quarter. Seven different Falcons scored in the first half with Sheahin and Kyleen Armstrong each notching eight points and Bianca Hood and Sydney Lewis each adding six.

Sheahin, a 5-foot-9 guard headed to Loyola, Md., stole the show with solid ball-handling, a deft outside scoring touch and ability to drive to the basket.

“Katie’s obviously playing very confidently right now,” Good Counsel coach Tom Splaine said. “She’s Miss Do Everything for us. She rebounds, she scores, she plays great defense, she handles the ball real well.”

Good Counsel only turned the ball over once in the first half, which is quite a feat especially considering McNamara’s intense ball pressure is made to force turnovers. The Falcons had a 21-point lead heading into the half and maintained if for much of the game.

“We just got pumped up together,” Sheahin said. “We came out hyped and it showed.”

McNamara (14-11) started to crawl back into the game by scoring nine straight points to pull to 14 points down with two minutes, 16 seconds left in the game.

At that point, Splaine inserted Sheahin back into the game. She pulled down three straight rebounds and hit 3-of-4 free throws to eliminated any comeback attempt.

Taylor Brown and Micheal Bryant each scored 19 points for McNamara.