Lancaster back in state semifinals after dominant regionalwin over Fairport

It was a run of legendary proportions, and it helped give the Lancaster girls basketball

team another regional championship.

A 25-0 run spanning much of the first half lifted the Legends to a 54-20 win over Fairport

in the Class AAA Far West Regional on Friday night at Buffalo State University.

The dominant win sends Lancaster (19-3) back to the NYSPHSAA semifinals for the

second consecutive season.

“Awesome, awesome win,” said Lancaster head coach Jayson Jaskier.

“The girls have a voice in the game plan. So, defensively, after watching film and

studying some things, they knew what they wanted to do, what they were most

comfortable with executing. … So when you have buy-in from the team, and they’re

involved in the planning process, they have confidence to go out and execute it on the

floor.”

Lancaster trailed 5-3 early in the first quarter after a Katie Patterson 3-pointer for

Fairport – and that was the last time the Raiders (14-9) would score for quite a while.

The Legends held the Raiders scoreless for over 11 minutes, and in that same span,

Lancaster star Madison Francis took over.

The Mississippi State commit scored 16 of her game-high 29 points in the first half, as

the Legends held a 28-7 halftime lead.

“I feel like our defense started a little slow, so we definitely picked that up,” said Francis,

who also finished with 20 rebounds for a 20-20 game. “I feel like our defense really

motivated our offense and for everyone to get energy.”

Francis has faced plenty of different defensive looks this season, including double and

sometimes triple teams. For the most part on Friday, though, Fairport’s defensive looks

gave her much more room to score, as she finished with more points herself than her

opponents.

“It was such a relief,” said a laughing Francis on avoiding double teams. “All our hard

work is paying off and all our hours in the gym really paid off.”

The second half saw much of the same Lancaster dominance as the first half. Fairport

cut its deficit down to 16 early in the third, but that was as close as it would come the

rest of the way.

As the Legends pulled away in the fourth, Francis added another highlight to her

collection on a beautiful spin move under the basket to shake two defenders and score

an easy layup.

“It was like a Houdini move,” said Jaskier on Francis’ spin move and score. “All of a

sudden she was in front of the defenders and then she was gone and the ball was going

through the net.”

Lola Pucci’s five points led the Raiders.

The Legends will face Section I’s Albertus Magnus in the state semifinals as they seek

to win the program’s first state championship. After falling in the semis a year ago,

Jaskier believes his team is more experienced and prepped for the big stage.

“We have a lot of the same girls that were here last year,” Jaskier said. “We kind of

picked up where we left off planning wise, practice wise. The girls came out and knew,

hey, we’re going to build a really tough non-league schedule so that as we go through

the season, we’re preparing ourselves for a playoff run to get back to Hudson Valley.”

The Class AAA semifinal between Lancaster and Albertus Magnus is set for 3:15 p.m.

March 22 at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy.

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