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ATTLEBORO - You hear coaches say it all the time, just how tough it is to defeat a team three times in one season.

"Here's proof," Bishop Feehan High School girls' basketball coach Mike Deady said Thursday night.

Emma Creeden's baseline jumper with 1:42 left to play, on a pass from Christina Perez, finally gave the top-seeded Shamrocks the cushion they needed to dismiss upset-minded North Attleboro, leading to a 55-47 triumph in the first round of the MIAA Division 2-South Tournament.

The Rocketeers had given Feehan two of its toughest tests of this unbeaten season, losing 62-52 in December and 58-43 a week ago. Thursday's result was Feehan's only single-digit win of the year to date.

"You would need the whole sports section to write what I'd like to say about these kids," an emotionally spent North Attleboro coach John DelBonis said after the game, one in which the 17th-seeded Red Rocketeers expended every bit of energy available to them and stood on the precipice of a monumental upset. North's dynamic frontcourt tandem, seniors Nicole Matte and Lauren Sexton, sent Feehan to the brink late in the fourth quarter. Trailing 47-40, Matte first sent a beautiful through-the-paint pass to Sexton for a left-baseline lay-in with 3:20 left. Then on the next possession, the 5-foot-10 Matte netted a 5-foot jumper on a pass from Amanda Beaupre and was fouled in the act by Jenna Roncarati, sinking the free throw to pull North within two points with 2:48 left.

Creeden's basket, accounting for two of her six points, started an 8-2 Feehan run down the stretch, six of the points scored at the foul line.

"It was a pressure shot and she hit it," Deady said. "It was a huge momentum builder for us. And once Amy (Lepley) comes back in, it's a different kind of ball game."

It was tense for the 21-0 Shamrocks because their heart and soul, Lepley, was on the bench with four fouls from the 7:21 mark of the fourth quarter (with Feehan up 39-34) to 3:52. Fortunately, the five Shamrocks on the floor, with Morgan Lindberg in at the point, maintained the five-point margin.

The seeds for a potential upset were sewn in the first half - although with Feehan racing out to an 8-0 lead in the first 2:16, that wasn't evident at the start.

"I thought we were going to smoke 'em," Deady said. "We tried to press them a little bit because I wanted an up-tempo game, I didn't want a halfcourt game."

The problem arose when, time after time, the Shamrocks would penetrate to the basket and not hit the shot, then get the offensive rebound and still not convert. Despite pulling down 18 offensive rebounds in the first half, Feehan shot a miserable 8-for-41 (19.5 percent) from the field.

"We had a lot of good shots and we didn't put them in the basket ... inside stuff, easy stuff, and we just didn't put them in the basket," Deady said.

With the help of an early 7-0 run in the second quarter, North pulled even at 17-17 on a pair of Sexton free throws with 3:45 left, and only a three-pointer by Lindberg in the last 20 seconds enabled Feehan to lead at the break, 24-23.

"We were very loose coming in, kind of like the Patriots-Giants situation," DelBonis said. "We've been playing good basketball the last 10-12 games of the season, and we liked our matchups inside with Matte and Lauren. If we could bottle up Lepley a little bit, I thought we'd be in the game." Lepley had 12 points at the half, but she shot 4-15 and the other starters were 3-19 - and when Matte scored on a putback to open the second half to put North up 25-24, an air of tension filled the Shamrocks' gym.

As it turned out, that would be North Attleboro's only lead.

Lepley's two free throws with 6:21 left in the quarter ignited a 14-2 Shamrock run. She accounted for seven points in the run and Feehan's lead hit a high of 11 points, 38-27, on Roncarati's lay-in off Kerin DeGirolamo's inbounds pass with 2:09 left.

The lead was nine at the quarter break, but Matte (playing with four fouls) ignited another Rocketeer run with a baseline jumper to open the fourth quarter. A 6-2 surge got the gap back down to five points, giving the Rocketeers a legitimate chance to win the game.

"We had to roll the dice and go down swinging," DelBonis said. "The effort was so good ... for us, it was all about giving a perfect effort, and we played as hard as we could."

In the end, patience served the Shamrocks. After shooting 8-41 in the first half, they were 8-22 in the second. The shot selection was better, the ball movement improved, and both Lepley (3-7 FG, 6-6 FT) and Roncarati (2-3 FG, 6-8 FT) produced when the chips were down in the second half.

"I said to them that this is the very definition of character," Deady said. "That's what it's about, and they showed it."

Senior guard Nicole Meyer led the Rocketeers (12-10) with 12 points before fouling out in the fourth quarter, adding a team-high four assists. Matte netted 11 points to bring her career total to 795 and pulled down a team-high eight rebounds, Katie Noll added 11 points and six rebounds and Sexton had nine points and seven rebounds.

For the Shamrocks, who advance to the Division 2-South quarterfinals Saturday at home (2 p.m.) against Notre Dame Academy of Hingham (a 57-39 victor over Bishop Stang), Lepley finished with a game-high 25 points and Roncarati added 15. Both pulled down 13 rebounds.