By DAVE O’SULLIVAN Publisher ABSECON — If the Holy Spirit girls basketball team keeps having games like the one Thursday night against rival Atlantic City, head coach Dennis Smith will have some grey hair and a bad ticker to go along with his injured left foot. The Spartans squandered a 10-point second-quarter lead, but Francesca Geromini nailed a huge 3-pointer with 40 seconds left to send the game into overtime, where Geromini continued to stay hot to help Holy Spirit rally for a 57-54 victory that kept Smith’s team in contention for the Cape-Atlantic League’s American Conference championship. “I can’t believe she shot it,” Holy Spirit senior guard Natalie Neiderhofer said of Geromini’s game-tying three. “I thought she was going to drive to the basket, and when she pulled up for the shot I was like, oh my God. It felt like it was in the air forever. Thank God it went in.” “We had a long day today at school, so why not make it a little longer by going into overtime? Having an 8-point lead at halftime, then losing the whole lead and being down by four in the fourth quarter. I said to the girls at halftime that I don’t want to see the same show I’ve seen before,” Smith said. “We had a lead the first time we played them and we gave it up because we didn’t box out, we didn’t rebound. That’s one of the things, we didn’t do it great tonight, but we were able to do it down the stretch when we needed to. Francesca Geromini, left, hit a game-tying 3-pointer with less than a minute to play to send the game into overtime. She scored nine of her 15 points in the fourth quarter and overtime. Francesca Geromini, left, hit a game-tying 3-pointer with less than a minute to play to send the game into overtime. She scored nine of her 15 points in the fourth quarter and overtime. Geromini sank a three from the corner to make it 54-52, but Atlantic City answered with a pair of free throws from Wright to knot the score at 54. With less than a minute to play, Geromini scored on a putback, and a free throw from Gallagher gave the Spartans a 57-54 lead with 3.2 seconds left. The win was important for Holy Spirit, which lost 56-40 to Mainland Regional on Tuesday night and needed a victory to have any shot of overtaking Atlantic City for the conference title. “It was a huge win for us. One of the things we talked about after the Mainland game was that it was over. They just absolutely butt-whipped us in our own gym, and they get the credit for it because they took us right out of everything we wanted to do and played great defense against us. We came untied a little bit defensively and weren’t able to get stops when we needed to against them, so it was a nice win for us,” Smith said. “It was one of those things where I said to the girls, ‘you have to play with that desperation now.’ (Mainland) played with desperation because their conference season was on the line in that game. If they picked up a third loss they would be done. I said to them, ‘your conference season is now on the line, tonight, against Atlantic City.'” “Cedar Creek (Sunday night) was a good win for us, but other than that it’s been a while since we had one of these really good wins where we are really excited and jumping up and down in the locker room,” Neiderhofer said. “It helps a lot, especially going into harder games (in February).” Contact Dave O’Sullivan: sully@acglorydays.com; on Twitter @GDsullysays [adsense]