New London — The reason this game was played Monday:

So the New London High School girls’ basketball team could see and try to work through the crushing pressure and depth of one of the best teams in Massachusetts in Cathedral High of Boston.

So Cathedral could get experience against the No. 4-ranked team in Connecticut, New London, and the Whalers’ duo of Nalyce Dudley and Serenity Lancaster, two of the state’s best players.

Cathedral got the victory, 53-42, leading by as many as 14 in the third quarter, then holding off the Whalers as they pulled within seven on an offensive rebound by Sacred Heart-bound Nalyce Dudley with 3 minutes, 29 seconds remaining.

“That’s why I love playing (Cathedral coach Clinton Lassiter). We’ve been friends for a long time,” New London coach Tammy Millsaps said. “When I was at (Capital Prep) we played every year. He’s going to bring a great game plan and intensity and we’re going to bring the same thing.

“This is the fourth game of the season. We’ve got 16 more to go. This is what I want to do. I told my kids at halftime, ‘Are we going to be the team that when a team comes here that’s athletic, has speed, agility and toughness, are we going to put our tail between our legs or are we going to compete?’

“I thought we competed tonight.”

Lancaster finished with 18 points, 10 rebounds and three blocked shots, while Dudley had 16 points, 11 rebounds and two steals. Freshman Nyarah Dudley added nine rebounds for New London (3-1).

Sarah Thompson and sophomore Hijah Allen-Paisley had 15 points apiece, each with three 3-point field goals, for Cathedral (7-1).

Cathedral took the lead for good on a 3 by Allen-Paisley in the first quarter and bumped the lead up to 17-9 in the second on a 3 by Thompson.

New London scored six straight points, beginning the run with a bank shot by Dudley. Dudley scored at the front of a fast break and Lancaster scored on an offensive rebound with 5:30 in the half to pull within 17-15. That was quieted by another 3 from Allen-Paisley.

Cathedral led 29-20 at halftime and built the advantage to 43-29 in the third. But Lancaster carved the margin back to 10, scoring the final basket of the third quarter and the first of the fourth and, while Cathedral went 1-for-its-next-4 from the foul line, New London kept chipping away.

Nalyce Dudley’s basket with 3:29 remaining got the Whalers to within 7. Cathedral called a 30-second timeout and finished the game flustering New London with its furious pressure.

“I thought the depth helped a lot,” said Lassiter, who had eight players score for the Panthers. “We like to play uptempo, we have a lot of bodies and can do a lot of different things. We want to wear them down as much as possible.

“Again, we’re never going to match their size, we just try to match their speed.”

Cathedral came into the season unranked in Massachusetts but knocked off No. 1 St. Mary’s 55-53 in mid-December behind 25 points from Allen-Paisley. The new Massachusetts rankings are scheduled to be released this week.

“We start back to school on Wednesday with a nice, good game, a good win and come back refocused for the week,” Lassiter said. “And we play St. Mary’s again Friday. It’s going to be intense out there.”

New London plays Eastern Connecticut Conference rival Norwich Free Academy on Tuesday, then has four more in-state games before traveling to the Rose Classic in New York City over Martin Luther King weekend.

“We got what we got and we saw how we competed with them,” Millsaps said. “We can compete with just about anything. ... I loved what I saw. I said that to them, ‘I didn’t see any quit. I didn’t see any giving up.’ What I did see that we had to work on, we handled the pressure all game when all of a sudden, the last 3:30 we didn’t handle it. That was definitely frustrating.

“But I love those kinds of games. I’ll schedule those games a lot. Those are the kinds of teams, they’re going to make you better in a lot of different ways.”

v.fulkerson@theday.com