Even in the championship rounds, high school basketball games in Connecticut don’t exactly draw an A-list crowd most of the time…except for Saturday, that it, when a local hoops legend was on hand for Day 1 of the two-day championship session for the sport.
That legend was former Knicks guard Allan Houston, who was on hand at Mohegan Sun Arena on Saturday night watching his daughter, Rowan, and her Notre Dame of Fairfield girls basketball team defeat Newington, 60-45, to win the state Class L Championship.
The victory gave the Lancers, seeded third in Class L after going 17-3 in the regular-season (with two of those losses to out-of-state parochial powerhouses in a regional tournament), their first state title in seven attempts. ND-Fairfield reached three straight finals from 1987-89 and made it back in 2007, 2013, and 2016, but came up short each time.
Rowan Houston did not light up the score sheet like her famous father used to in the finals, but her lone contribution was huge: a block and then a three-pointer in transition, her only field goal, put the Lancers up 31-26 halfway through the third, and was part of a 17-6 run that turned a two-point halftime deficit into a big lead Notre Dame never relinquished.
Houston, a junior, will be back next year to try to make it back-to-back titles for the Lancers, who have become one of the top programs in the state under another Connecticut hoops legend in head coach Maria Conlon.
If that name sounds familiar to even casual fans, it should: Conlon, who set the state three-pointer record while starring at Seymour High from 1996-2000, won two state titles as a Wildcat before going on to UConn, where she was part of teams that went to four Final Fours and won three straight National Championships from 2000-04.
Conlon, the starting point guard on the latter two UConn title teams, later played professionally overseas, won a Division II National Title in 2007 as an assistant coach under former Seymour coach Joe Frager at Southern Connecticut State, and took over at ND-Fairfield in 2019 when her second head coach at Seymour, Eric DeMarco, retired.
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