(Photo provided courtesy of Neshaminy basketball)
Kristin Curley, according to her coach, knows what it takes to win.
“And she’s willing to do what that is,” Neshaminy coach Joe Lally said of his senior captain. “If that means she’s got to score like she’s shown this year, she’ll score.
“It’s been fun to watch her adjust her game to whatever we really need. Kristin is very unselfish. She’s not a kid that’s comfortable in the limelight, but she’ll step up and do what it takes to help her team win.”
In Neshaminy’s regular season finale against archrival Pennsbury, the Redskins found themselves in a dogfight with their archrival, but Curley was on the bench after picking up her fourth foul late in the third quarter.
Trailing by four, the Redskins had the ball under their own basket with 1.7 seconds left. Lally reinserted Curley into the lineup, and on a broken play, the senior point guard received the inbounds pass on the low post from Emily Tantala. With defenders draped all over her, Curley – despite being fouled - somehow made the basket at the buzzer.
“I got the ball on the block, and there’s one second left,” Curley said. “They’re all six inches taller than me, but I have to throw something up. It just kind of worked out.”
No sooner had the ball fallen through the net than the senior point guard was mobbed by ecstatic teammates. The basket not only loomed large in the game, pulling the Redskins to within two, it also vaulted Curley to the coveted 1,000-point milestone.
“Oh my gosh – it was so cool, and I was so happy,” Curley said. “I’m very happy that I got to share that with all my teammates, and that they were the girls that were with me when it happened. It’s so cool. I don’t even have words for it really. I don’t even know how to describe it.”
Curley – the ultimate gamer – buried the foul shot to pull her team to within one heading into the fourth quarter, and although the Redskins came up short, they still owned a share of the SOL National Conference title with Pennsbury.
Entering her team’s showdown against Pennsbury, Curley needed 11 points to reach the milestone.
“I was more focused on winning that game than getting a thousand,” she said. “Team goals came first going into my senior year. That really wasn’t on my radar until the beginning of the year.
“Obviously, we knew we would need a scorer because graduating two 1,000-point scorers (Brooke Mullin and Allison Harvey) is not an easy thing to come back (from). Someone has to score points this year.”
It was appropriate that Curley – the Redskins’ floor general – scored the historic basket by salvaging a broken play.
“The play we called is a play we’ve been running for four years,” she said. “It’s an elevator screen for a shooter.
“(Pennsbury coach) Frank Sciolla, being aware and just having any basketball knowledge knew that was coming so he was screaming, ‘Elevator screen, elevator screen,’ and I was like, ‘Shoot, they know what we’re doing,’ so I knew they were overplaying it, so I didn’t do what was drawn up. It ended up getting three points anyway, which was fine. It was kind of reacting to the defense at that point because I knew they knew what we were doing.”
Curley adjusting to the Falcons’ adjustments did not surprise her coach.
“If there ever is a quarterback, the person that leads you while you’re playing the game, that’s her,” Lally said. “Just her intelligence – she knows what it takes or what the team needs to get over the hump to succeed, to win and to compete.
“We talk about valuable players, and I’m not sure if she’s not in the lineup we have the success we’ve had. In fact, I’m positive if she’s not in the lineup we don’t have the success we’ve had. She’s a winner, she competes, and she’s smart.”
The Redskins have won a lot during Curley’s four years in the varsity lineup. This year’s co-championship represented the third consecutive year Neshaminy has won at least a share of the title.
For Curley, this season marks the end of the line. Basketball will not be part of her future.
“People keep bringing that up – how does it feel knowing that you only have a certain amount of games left,” she said. “I’m really starting to think about it. It’s going to be very different next year not having sports in my life.
“It was a super hard decision to make. I’m not looking forward to basketball ending.”
Curley has narrowed her final college choices down to St. Joseph’s, Pitt and Temple. She admits she was tempted to consider schools interested in obtaining her talents.
“I went on some visits,” she said. “I made my decision I would really like to focus on school – go to a bigger school potentially and focus on academics. It was a very hard decision to make, but I think I need to move on from basketball.”
The Redskins will travel to second-seeded Central Bucks West for a second round game on Wednesday. A win in one of the next two games will give Neshaminy a state berth.
“We’re trying to make the season last as long as possible,” Curley said.
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