Resilient Franklin comeback bid falls short in girls T of C basketball final

Just when it appeared the Franklin High School girls basketball team, whose trademark is resiliency, was on the precipice of yet another dramatic comeback victory, Manasquan’s Dara Mabrey answered with the biggest buckets of her storied career.

After Franklin closed a 17-point deficit to one with under three minutes remaining and had a chance to take its first lead of the game, Mabrey converted a turnover into a coast-to-coast layup before converting another turnover into a 3-pointer from the top of the arc.

The clutch baskets lifted Manasquan to a 72-60 victory in the Tournament of Champions final at CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton on Sunday.

Mabrey posted a game-high 30 points, 12 of which came from the charity stripe, while teammate Faith Masonius posted a double-double with 23 points and 15 rebounds to help Manasquan (32-2) avenge a buzzer-beating loss to Franklin in last year’s Tournament of Champions final.

After Mabrey’s layup and long-range jumper gave Manasquan a 61-55 lead with two minutes remaining, Franklin had one more run left in its season.

Kennady Schenck, the hero of last year’s final with a game-winning baseline jumper in overtime for a 50-48 win over Manasquan, drained a 3-pointer from the right corner, and teammate Tiana Jackson sank a pair of free throws, closing the deficit to 61-60 with one minute and 21 seconds remaining.

Franklin, however, would get no closer as it failed to convert on each of its next five possessions. Manasquan closed the game with an 11-0 run to produce the final margin.

Franklin head coach Audrey Taylor, a former star at South River High School, praised her team for overcoming a slow start to the season, in which Franklin lost six of its first 10 games, and for winning 17 straight to reach the Tournament of Champions final for the second straight year.

“We’ve been fighting all season,” Taylor said, “so we weren’t going to go out without a fight today.”

Diamond Miller, who like Masonius, has made a nonbinding commitment to the University of Maryland, collected a team-high 20 points and seven rebounds for Franklin, whose 25-8 season included the school’s first Somerset County Tournament championship.

“Obviously it didn’t end the way we wanted it to end, but overall we had a great season,” said Miller, whose team was looking to become only the second in state history to win back-to-back Tournament of Champions crowns, matching the feat of Shabazz, which won consecutive titles in 2003-04 and in 2013-14. “We had our ups and downs, but we still made it here.”

Franklin advanced to the Tournament of Champions final with a 56-53 overtime win in the semifinals against St. Rose, which squandered a nine-point halftime lead.

Franklin trailed Manasquan 39-22 with just under six minutes left in the third quarter and was down 49-38 entering the fourth quarter, which Franklin opened with a 15-7 run, closing the deficit to 56-55 with three minutes and 13 seconds to play.

“I said to them you have four minutes left here, you have to dig deep to give everything you have, whether it’s on the offensive end, the defensive end,” Manasquan coach Lisa Kukoda said. “The biggest thing was keeping our composure. They were pressuring us. That’s a credit to them. We had to keep our composure to do what we needed to do.”

Mabrey, a Virginia Tech signee who has amassed more than 2,000 points, answered Franklin’s big run with the biggest buckets of her career for Manasquan, which was making an unprecedented fifth consecutive Tournament of Champions final appearance.

“I said a prayer during the game, and I knew I was going to do something to win,” Mabrey said while fighting back tears in the postgame press conference. “I think I played with that emotion. I wasn’t going down tonight.”

Franklin, which graduates just three players, only one of which found the scoring column on Sunday, has the potential to be building a dynasty not all that dissimilar from that which Manasquan has erected.

Following in the footsteps of her older sisters Marina and Michaela, Mabrey earned her second Tournament of Champions title, the last of which she won as a freshman. After graduating high school, Michaela made multiple Final Four appearances with the University of Notre Dame, where Marina currently plays.

Franklin, which shot 8 of 30 from the floor in the opening half, trailed 32-20 at the break. Miller was limited to six points on 2 of 11 shooting, but rebounded from her slow start to score 14 points after the intermission.

Franklin stepped up its defensive intensity in the third quarter, forcing seven turnovers to spark a 12-4 run that helped it climb back into the contest. Franklin’s aggressiveness, however, came with a cost as Manasquan found itself in the bonus with more than nine minutes left in the game.

Franklin was outscored 21-11 from the charity stripe with Mabrey and Masonius accounting for all of Manasquan’s free throws. The duo shot 21 of 23 from the line.