Girls basketball: Power trio leads Holy Cross over Sacred Heart

BY KEVIN ROBERTS
WATERBURY — The Holy Cross High girls basketball team used a big third quarter to blow open the first of two seasonal meetings against city-rival Sacred Heart and win, 66-34, on Wednesday at the Tim McDonald Gymnasium.
The Crusaders held the Hearts scoreless for over six minutes in the third quarter and wound up outscoring the visitors, 17-4, to open up a 49-25 lead. Holy Cross cruised from there to win the first game of a boys-girls doubleheader at The Pit.
The Crusaders improved to 7-0 in the NVL and 7-1 overall. The Hearts fell to 8-2 in both the league and overall.
Cayla Howard led Holy Cross with a game-high 18 points. Mya Zaccagnini had 17 points and looked nothing like a freshman playing in her first Holy Cross-Sacred Heart game.
“I just go out there every day the same way, no matter what team it is,” Zaccagnini said.
Alyssa Hebb added 15 points for the Crusaders.
Aamya Rivera paced Sacred Heart with 15 points. The Hearts were banged up, with starting forward Emily Ronalter missing the game with an ankle injury. Rivera was playing with an injured left wrist, Mikayla Mobley was not back at full health and Paige Carroll came up limping in the second half, though she wound up being OK.
Holy Cross’ three-headed attack of Zaccagnini, Howard and Hebb combined for 28 of the team’s 32 first-half points. Zaccagnini hit three 3-pointers and scored 11 points in the first quarter. Hebb and Howard had all 10 of the Crusaders’ points in the second quarter.
Holy Cross pressed Sacred Heart, forced turnovers, then took off running.
“We were just running our break and getting the wide-open layups that we wanted,” Hebb said. “That’s what we practice in practice.”
“We work on it every day in practice,” senior Jenna Mowad said about the pressure defense. “We go over it every single day. We work on our defense. Our team is defense.”