The NEPSAC Class A Basketball Tournament semifinals couldn’t have gotten off to better start for second-seeded Sacred Heart Greenwich, which converted the majority of its shots, played lockdown defense and seized the momentum throughout the first quarter of its final four game against sixth-seeded Taft School.

Sacred Heart, which lost to Taft School during the regular season, left nothing to chance in this semifinal-round showdown, soaring to a 21-point first quarter lead on its way to earning another spot in the tournament’s final.

Senior guard/captain Eva Wilkerson scored 20 points and junior forward Lucianna Parrotta also poured in 20 points to ignite host Sacred Heart to a highly impressive 58-35 win over Taft. The win propelled the Tigers into the NEPSAC Class A Tournament’s championship game, where they will play top-seeded Loomis Chaffee School at Noble & Greenough School in Massachusetts today at 4:20 p.m. The championship game is a rematch of last season’s NEPSAC Class A final won by Loomis Chaffee.

“It feels so good, this is my last year here – I’m just really excited to play,” said Wilkerson, who scored 12 second-half points versus Taft. “Being in the finals last year, it was a really good learning experience.”

Sacred Heart held a 23-2 lead on Taft in the first quarter, before ending the frame ahead, 23-3. The hosts also enjoyed leads of 28-6 and 30-10 in the second quarter and entered halftime with a 30-15 advantage.

“The intensity was always there,” SHG coach Ayo Hart said. “The girls came out focused and fired up. We lost to this team earlier in the season without Eva and Emma (Mathews) and I think they felt like it was a revenge match. Also, they knew what was on the line and they delivered on both ends of the floor.”

Mathews, a junior forward, scored nine points, including three 3-pointers for the Tigers, who advanced to the NEPSAC semifinals by beating seventh-seeded Choate Rosemay Hall, 57-48, at home in the quarterfinals on March 4th.

“It feels unbelievable, we’re really proud of this group,” said Mathews, who along with Wilkerson and senior guard/forward Ava Curto, captains the squad. “We lost to Taft earlier in the year, so to pull out this win is a testament to how we bounce back and how we’re prepared.”

Guard Adrian Allegretti totaled six points on two 3-pointers and Curto had two points and provided strong defensive play for the Tigers, who limited Taft to 15 first-half points.

Taft had its moments in the second half, but the closest they could come to SHG was 15 points. Wilkerson and Parrotta, both of whom have scored more than 1,000 career points for the Tigers, enabled the home team to pull away in the second half with baskets from numerous areas of the court.

“I think the team was really dominant,” Wilkerson said. “We lost to them the last time we played them and I think we just knew what we had to do. We had intensity the entire time. We were locked in from the beginning. Even from warm-ups, I could feel it, everyone was locked in and ready to play.”

The victors took solid shots throughout, which came from excellent passing.

“We were hitting more outside shots at the beginning and then I thought we did a good job of getting the ball inside,” Hart noted.

Sacred Heart was defeated by rival St. Luke’s School in the FAA Tournament final after having won the league championship the past two seasons. The loss has served as an extra motivator to the Tigers.

“The St. Luke’s game our Achilles Heel was making shots,” Mathews noted. “So, locking in on a small target making an extra pass, finding your teammates and just playing good team basketball is how we won this game.”

Hart is pleased with what she’s seen from her squad after the tough loss to St. Luke’s in the FAA title game.

“I’m really proud of them for that,” she said. “I thought we learned from things from that game. I was happy with how we learned and then implemented what we learned right away. We made adjustments individually and as a team from the mistakes that we made that we’re not going to make again.”

For Taft, junior Sarah Santimaw had 11 points with two 3-pointers and sophomore Lucia Ruscitti added eight points. Senior Maddy Little and Jalisa Matthews had five points apiece for the visitors.

Sacred Heart lost to Loomis Chaffee in the 2025 NEPSAC Class A Tournament final, 51-45. The game marked the first appearance in the NEPSAC basketball final for SHG.

“It feels good, the last time we went we lost, hopefully, this time we can go in and win and make school history,” Curto said. “I think this year we’re going to come out hungrier and just play our best team basketball and used what we learned from last year as motivation.”

“Hopefully, we’ll bring a NEPSAC champion to Sacred Heart for the first time in school history,” Mathews said.

“We had never been to the finals before last year,” Hart noted. “At least now what we have is some experience going into it.”