Bria Smith hates nothing more than losing. It’s the bane of the Christ the King superstar’s existence. She’s typically miserable and downright inconsolable after any loss, whether it be in December or March.
But when she left the locker room at Holy Trinity on Sunday night, the sun setting on her phenomenal career, there was actually a tiny smile on her face.
“Me and all my seniors, we’re gonna go on and do better things,” Smith said after a 62-58 loss to Nazareth in the CHSAA Class AA state girls basketball championship game in Hicksville, L.I. “I can’t be too mad. I am upset, but I can’t be too mad because I know we have a good future ahead of us.”
It wasn’t like Smith wanted to see it all come to the end. She was bent on winning a second straight CHSAA state title and another NYS Federation championship. The ultra-athletic, 5-foot-10 guard had 13 of her 27 points in the fourth quarter Sunday as Christ the King tried to claw back from down 51-34 with 6:43 left.
“I asked them to play as hard as they could,” CK coach Bob Mackey said. “They did. The last five minutes, they gave everything they had.”
But it wasn’t enough. The lead was too great, the three-game weekend just too long and taxing on a relatively thin Royals team. Mackey said at one point in the fourth he saw Smith explode on the break, but her teammates could only trail behind her.
“There didn’t look like there was very much in the tank,” he said.
Illinois-bound forward Nia Oden had 12 points and junior Rayne Connell had 10 for the Royals, who did get as close as 60-57 before two Bianca Cuevas free throws with 9.5 seconds left sealed the deal for the Lady Kingsmen.
“We really tried to come back, but I think time was just against us,” Smith said.
She and Oden have left their mark on Christ the King in their time as part of the legendary program. The two came up as freshmen, the first two ninth-graders to play varsity girls basketball in more than a decade at the Middle Village school. They will leave with New York State Federation Class AA and A titles, the former coming last year when pundits all but wrote off the Royals ever being a national power again.
There was a chance that title could have been defended this year. But when starting post Taylor Butigian went out with a hand injury last week, those odds decreased. Christ the King wasn’t very deep to begin with. Still, the Royals made their rivals sweat until the final buzzer sounded Sunday night.
“We went out fighting,” Oden said. “That’s all that matters.”