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Sports

Cristaldi Hits Buzzer-Beater to Lift Summit over Westfield, 44-42

Another impressive road win for the girls basketball team, now at 11-1.

WESTFIELD–On Tuesday afternoon, the 10-1 Summit girls basketball team traveled to Westfield to take on a 5-6 Blue Devils. Though the teams' season records were slightly mismatched, the teams themselves were not. The Hilltoppers won the game in dramatic fashion as Summit's Emily Cristaldi hit a layup at the buzzer for the 44-42 win.

"In practice, we work on end of the game situations where you have five or six seconds left on the clock," Summit head coach Brian Erickson said. "Today we executed perfectly–we got the ball to a guard, Emily got to the rim, and it was one of those perfect scores."

The game was truly a battle from start to finish. Both teams were athletic, fast, and defensively solid. Offense was streaky for both the Hilltoppers and the Blue Devils throughout all four quarters.

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In the opening quarter, a Cristaldi three-pointer and a Kate Martino jumper helped Summit go on a 6-0 run.  In the second quarter, layups by Kelly Osmulski and Nicole Johnson resulted in another 6-0 Summit run to make the score 21-11.

Just as fans thought the Hilltoppers were going to pull away and never look back, Westfield forward Diana Venezia began to light up the court. She crashed the boards hard, grabbing several offensive rebounds and converting the put-backs. She prevented Hilltopper scores with two big defensive blocks and, at the 5-minute mark in the third quarter, went coast-to-coast for a layup to tie the game 23-23. The 10-0 Westfield run caused Coach Erickson to call a timeout.

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Following the timeout, Emily Cristaldi nailed a three-pointer, and then added another with 40 seconds remaining in the third quarter to add to Summit's lead, 35-27.

In the fourth quarter, Westfield went on 9-0 run and put pressure back on the Hilltoppers. With 1:27 left on the clock, Summit forward Cassie Hall, the team's main presence in the post, fouled out. At the time, Summit led 42-36.

"Once Cassie fouled out, it really changed what they did on the interior," Erickson said. "After that, they went at us hard and made a few tough shots."

Westfield's Katie Ponce took advantage of Hall's absence in the post and scored two consecutive layups to make the score 42-40 with 40 seconds remaining in the game. Trailing now by just two points, the Blue Devils got it to the hot-handed Ponce once again, and with 10 seconds left on the clock, the junior guard drained an 18-footer to tie the game 42-42.

Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, Summit was able to get the ball to their leading scorer, Emily Cristaldi, on the following in-bounds play. Cristaldi dribbled through two Westfield players and hit an acrobatic layup at the buzzer to lift Summit to victory 44-42.

"I can't say enough about my team," Erickson said. "It's fun coaching them, and it's fun just watching them and their development throughout this season. At the end of the game, we had four sophomores and one senior on the court. Our younger players really stepped it up today. You can't get experience like this in practice. We want to have our younger players in tough situations like that. It will only make us better as a team."

Cristaldi, coming off a 27-point performance in the Hilltoppers' previous game, scored a game-high 19 points on the afternoon and added four steals. Sophomore point guard Kate Martino scored eight points and grabbed four rebounds, and Nicole Johnson contributed seven points and five rebounds. Westfield's Diana Venezia led her team with 17 points and nine rebounds.

Summit, now 11-1, will travel to Linden High School on Thursday. Game time is 4 p.m.

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