Bay View showed who they are Friday. It just took a technical foul to make it happen.

EAST PROVIDENCE — The game was physical, but when Dawan Robinson saw Amelia Polichetti get bumped going to the bucket and fall to the floor, he saw enough.

The Bay View girls basketball coach didn’t use any words that would draw a detention in class, but the persistent badgering earned him a bench warning. Robinson continued to talk through the warning and was handed a technical foul.

Robinson immediately stopped talking and took a seat – and then the Bengals started to roar.

In a game devoid of sparks, Robinson’s tech provided just that for Bay View. The game against Cranston West wasn’t pretty, but the Bengals played their best basketball after their coach was T’d up and cruised home with a 45-32 win.

“You want to get his back,” Bay View’s Ava Wasylow said. “He’s there fighting for us, making sure we’re getting the calls so we just want to make sure we’re doing our part on the court.”

It’s not exactly the way a coach wants to inspire a team, but on a night where defensive intensity was high and neither offense really had flow, it worked. Friday was a grind – and here’s what stood out.

Offensive play was spotty

Both Bay View and Cranston West played tough inside the 3-point line, with the Bengals sticking with a 2-3 zone and the Falcons playing a 1-2-2. There was no room to work in the interior and drive-and-dish options were null and void.

That forced both offenses to try and make threes and neither side could with any consistency. Points came off turnovers and in transition with a few bombs sprinkled in there. It led to more than a few frustrated possessions.

“We’ve got to expect that,” Bay View’s Polichetti said. “… We have to always grind. We have to play hard and have to accept that it’s not always going to be perfect.”

Bay View scored the first eight points of the game, but Cranston West came back and trailed 12-8 after the first quarter. The Bengals got a spark from a pair of late 3-pointers by Sofia Moreno to take a 24-15 lead at halftime.

It didn’t take long for Bay View to get the lead into double digits, but it couldn’t but Cranston West away. The Falcons kept knocking on the door and dropped the deficit to 10, but Bay View found an answer every time to prevent the lead from hitting single digits.

“We always know that if we start to feel that energy, we build off of it so we know when other teams start that, we need to stop that because if we get that opportunity, we’re taking it and running with it,” Wasylow said. “We huddled really quick on the court, we get together and say ‘focus, lock in right now’ and we’re usually OK.”

But the Bengals weren’t OK until what happened with :52 seconds left in the third quarter.

The best type of technical foul

Robinson had a few healthy discussions about calls throughout the game, but when Polichetti went to the ground the volume changed a bit.

Language didn’t draw the warning. Language didn’t draw the tech. Robinson – who apologized for drawing the call to a Bay View administrator after the game – said his frustration hit a boiling point and he wanted to let the official know he wasn’t happy. He just did it in a manner the official didn’t like and very much deserved the T he was handed, which for Robinson was a better scenario than one of his players reacting in a way that would have drawn one.

But how the Bengals responded in the aftermath spoke louder than any word Robinson said.

Bay View closed the quarter and led 35-23, but jumped out of the gates early in the fourth and built the lead to 20. For the first time, the Bengals were playing inspired basketball.

“When our coach gets a tech, a lot of teams and a lot of people in general, they’ll crumble,” Polichetti said. “We can’t do that so we just came together as a team and we realized we’ve got to do it.”

“If we’re not getting the calls there’s nothing we can do about it,” Wasylow said. “We just have to go out and work harder. We can’t let the refs determine anything about the game – we have to work hard and do it ourselves.”

Gianna Paolino played an inspired fourth quarter, scoring seven of her 10 points. Qiana Sumner did the same, getting five of her six in the final eight minutes as Bay View outscored Cranston West 14-9.

“Our coach, we couldn’t do it without him,” said Polichetti, who scored nine in the win. “He’s the one who gives us all the hope. We know we can do it and we just have to keep pushing.”

Falcons' wings were clipped early

Cranston West was rather emotionless after the loss. The Falcons have played good basketball this season and while they’ve had lows to go along with the highs, there hasn’t been a point where games looked like they did Friday.

Junior Kyla Buco – who scored a program record 37 in a win over Juanita Sanchez on Jan. 5 – even walked up to a Journal reporter after the game to make sure he knew that the team that played Friday isn’t who Cranston West really is.

“This was definitely not our best offensive game,” West’s Maia Riccio said. “We had trouble breaking their defense and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, which wasn’t necessary.”

The Falcons have been one of the pleasant surprises in D-I this winter and Friday’s loss drops them to 7-3. Considering the team’s youth, it’s not a bad place to be.

But things aren’t going to get easier. Tuesday, the Falcons travel to play 8-2 Ponaganset; Thursday, they’ll host 9-1 Barrington. These are the tests Cranston West needs if it wants to achieve lofty goals it thinks are within grasp.

“We’re a pretty young team with only four seniors and our confidence could be a little stronger, but that comes with experience,” Riccio said. “I think we can be a final four team. I think we’ve got it, but we’ve got to keep our confidence up and play our game.”

Bay View will get back to work

Being the defending state champs isn’t easy. The Bengals who won on the floor of the Ryan Center last march aren’t the same team that played Friday, but with the growth they’ve made there’s no reason they can’t do it again.

Beating Cranston West improved Bay View to 9-1 and after playing winless St. Raphael Monday, the Bengals have one of its biggest games of the season Thursday when it hosts North Kingstown – the same team it beat in last year’s state title game.

Bay View isn’t going to treat the matchup with the Skippers any different than they’re going to treat the Saints because it knows wins don’t happen that way.

“Sometimes teams are going to have good games, sometimes they’re going to have bad games,” Wasylow said. “We always come out blank slate; we always know effort, energy and enthusiasm and that’s what we do.

“It’s worked out, but we just have to keep putting the work in at practice and keep working hard.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Bay View girls basketball takes down Cranston West in defensive battle