Girls basketball
‘The Game' has ‘a whole other level' this year
For 1st time in 4 years, it's only Magic-Penguins meeting
Adding more drama to a rivalry that spans 51 years and draws the largest crowd of any girls high school event in Baltimore might seem impossible.
This year, however, the Institute of Notre Dame vs. Mercy basketball game, known as The Game, will have a slightly different spin when it tips off tonight at 7:30 at Towson University's SECU Arena. This is the first time in four years the teams haven't played earlier in the season.
“I think it adds a whole other level to the game,” Mercy junior forward and team captain Rachel Huebler said. “Not being able to play each other before, you're not as well prepared as you were in the past few years. If anything, there will be some surprises, which will make for a much more interesting game.”
An adjustment to the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland B Conference this season has every team playing every other once. Gone are the two divisions that had the Penguins and the Magic playing twice since Mercy dropped from the A Conference for the 2013-14 season.
“I think that's part of the anticipation of this year's game, part of the mystique to it,” IND coach Robert DuBose said. “We haven't seen them. We haven't scouted them because our schedules conflict.”
For the players, coaches and more than 3,000 alumnae, family and fans who provide the deafening soundtrack for The Game, nothing during the school year is more highly anticipated.
“It's just simply the tradition,” Mercy coach Steve Anderson said. “I don't think it requires much to get everyone up for it. Every kid in the school is aware of the big game. When you're talking about an all-girls school where they don't have football and they don't have homecoming, this is that homecoming for them.”
The Penguins have won The Game three straight times, and a win tonight would match their longest win streak in the history of the rivalry. They last won four in a row from 2003 to 2006.
“Winning the fourth game in a row would very important to us,” Madison DuBose, an IND junior forward, said, “because since before we've been here, they've been winning and we just want to carry on that legacy.”
The Penguins, with an 11-4 record and tied for first place in the B Conference, are heavily favored to beat Mercy, which is 3-10 and tied for last place. A win would also keep them undefeated at SECU Arena, where The Game moved in 2014 after 17 years at the Towson Center.
While the Magic lead the series 30-20, IND's 47-26 win last year pulled it even with Mercy over the past 38 years at 19-19.
Many of the players know one another from Amateur Athletic Union or other basketball leagues and they like each other — except for that hour and a half on the court.
Penguins leading scorer Ja'lyn Armstrong, a junior guard, said: “I've known some of the [Mercy] girls since elementary school. We talk about how our game's going, how this year's going, just playful banter like, ‘We're going to win. We're going to win.'?”
Both schools have a week of activities leading up to The Game. For the first time, they also staged an alumnae game, which ended in a tie.
As the anticipation builds, cheering reaches a decibel level that would seem to make it difficult for the players to concentrate, much less communicate, so some coaches have used signs to communicate with their players.
“We just usually scream and yell at each other, but we're so much of a family and we've been together for so long that we just know and trust each other,” Armstrong said with a laugh.
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
