Hilton holds off Victor for Class AA title

By PAUL GOTHAM

CANANDAIGUA, N.Y. — Tournament MVP Mallory Heise scored five of her game-high 13 points in the fourth quarter as the No. 2 Hilton Cadets rallied to beat top-seeded Victor, 38-33 in the 2024 Section V Class AA Girls’ Basketball championship Saturday at Finger Lakes Community College.

The junior guard used a hesitation dribble along the left side of the floor to get to the basket and score to give Hilton its first lead of the second half at 29-27.

“It feels great,” she said. “We really prided ourselves on being the best in the section. I think we really proved that today.”

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Heise later set up teammate Elena Graziano for a 3-pointer and a 33-30 edge. Her two free throws with 5.5 seconds remaining, in what was then a one-possession game, helped seal the championship.

“One of our mantras is five defend, five look to score,” said Hilton head coach Dave Heise (Mallory’s uncle). “Obviously, last four minutes we put the ball in Mal’s hands. I said ‘she’s got to get a touch and we’ll go from there.’ You can throw whatever you want at her. That kid gets stronger as the game goes on. I know that’s cliché, but she just does.”

The two teams split a pair of regular season game with Hilton (20-4) handing Victor (21-2) its only other loss with a 74-42 decision. The Blue Devils avenged that setback with a 62-55 victory in early February.

“First time we played them we beat them by 30,” Dave Heise said. “That was just magic. Everything clicked. We lost to them in overtime. We didn’t have Leah Thompson in that game.”

Saturday’s battle, though, was played at different pace with both squads being held 20 or more points under their season averages.

“We knew it was going to be a dogfight the whole way,” Mallory Heise said. “We were 1-and-1 during the regular season. We knew they were going to bring their best game, and we were going to do the same.”

Four different Blue Devils found the bottom of the net during an 8-0 run to start the second quarter when Victor took its largest lead of the game.

Rhylin Fehrenbach set up Abbie Murphy for a layup. Devin Livingston drove the lane and scored. Fehrenbach converted a steal and layup before Hope Stone hit a pull-up jumper for a 19-10 Victor advantage with less than four minutes remaining in the second quarter.

“We just gutted that out,” Dave Heise said. “We just fought through the first half, stayed in it, kept pounding it.”

Hilton held Victor to five field goals in the second half and limited Fehrenbach, who averaged 20 points per game during the regular season, to three points.

“We had to keep the ball out of Fehrenbach’s hands as much as possible,” Dave Heise said. “She’s a great athlete, a great player. She’s going to get the ball no matter what. We just packed the paint, nothing too complex with a lot of weakside help. If she did get it, we were going in and digging.

“We opened the game up a little bit in the third quarter into the fourth quarter playing man-to-man. We sped them up which is hard to do because they are a pretty fast team.”

The championship is the third in program history and first since 2011. The Cadets last reached the finals in the 2016 when they lost to Penfield in the AA championship.

“We’ve been building toward this for a few years,” Dave Heise said. “We’ve always scheduled hard. You should see our practices. They get after each other. They’ll knock each other down. They’ll get mad at each other. Then there’s some late-night texts where they apologize to each other. It’s a great group, true friendships. Everybody just does what they need to do to win.”

Leah Thompson scored nine points in the win. Ella Clark added seven. Graziano had six points. Tea Cosman and Maddie Murphy had two apiece.

Livingston led Victor with 11 points. Fehrenbach had eight. Stone and Murphy added five apiece. Vanesse Chumacero had four points.

Hilton will play either Starpoint (20-1) or Clarence (19-4) from Section VI in the NYS Far West Regional. That game is scheduled for next Friday at Finger Lakes Community College.