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By Nate Oxman
All Mercedes Harris could do was shake her head and smile.When the Norristown forward was asked what went wrong during her team’s seemingly endless five-minute scoreless stretch late in the first half, her, ‘You’re not going to bring that up, are you?’ smile said it all.
After charging out to an early 12-4 lead courtesy of relentless work in the paint by Harris and fellow forward Natasha Matthews, the host Eagles stumbled through the second quarter, scoring just four points. The last bucket came on a runner by Netta Wyse with just over five minutes to play.
That enabled the 17th-seeded Cardinals to claw back within one at 19-18 at the break. But after Norristown answered emphatically with an 11-0 run of their own to start the second half, the margin never came closer than four points as the 16th-seeded Eagles nabbed a 52-46 win in the first-round of the District One Class AAAA girls’ basketball playoffs.
Harris and Matthews had their way throughout the first quarter, finding open spots in the Cardinals’ defense for point guard Cashae Hinton to deliver perfect passes and collecting offensive rebounds with ease by relentlessly crashing the glass.
“Tasha and Mercedes are an excellent pair I think,” said Norristown coach Ashlee Harrison. “We continue to go to them all season long because they have so much strength inside, and they have grown so much and matured so much from the beginning of the season until now. And I think they realize how much potential they have together with our whole team and even for them to go one-on-one with any big man.”
The hard-working pair combined for 11 of the Eagles 15 first-quarter points. But after Harris pulled down an offensive rebound and converted the putback with 7:01 left in the first half, the duo went scoreless for the remainder of the period.“Yeah,” said Harris with a laugh. “Our point guard, she got into foul trouble early, and if the point guard isn’t there to bring the ball up the floor, we can’t get into our offense really. So we just tried to keep our composure and stay in the game. And we were able to pull it out.”
The Eagles managed just one more score in the quarter - Wyse’s bucket with just over 5:00 to play – creaking the door open just enough for the Cardinals to take a step in.
After also achieving success running their offense in the early stages but routinely failing to put home point-blank attempts, senior forward Danielle Derr kick-started a 6-0 spurt by beating Matthews baseline for a layup.
“That’s what happened the last game,” said Upper Dublin coach Vince Catanzaro of the Cardinals’ 48-42 loss to the Eagles on Feb. 5. “It was the same thing. What are you going to do? You’re getting good looks down there, but you’re just not finishing.”
On the next possession, Derr grabbed her own rebound and scored to draw the Cardinals within three at 19-16. Kristen Kane had a chance to cut that lead to one at the free-throw line with 1.6 seconds left, but missed both. Luckily, Rebecca Courter snagged the offensive rebound on the second attempt and laid the ball in just before the horn blew to end the first half.
But that’s when Harris went right back to work, igniting the 11-0 stretch to start the third quarter that all but did the Cardinals in. Harris started the scoring by taking a nice pass from Wyse for a layup and tallied six points during the run, including two via textbook back cuts and heads-up passes from Hinton.
The backdoor layups were the result of a new wrinkle Harrison added for the third meeting between these two familiar Suburban One American Conference foes.
“Our coach switched up some of our offense because we played them twice already in the regular season,” said Harris. “We didn’t want to come out with the same stuff so our coach tweaked a little bit of our plays and put in more plays and we just spread the floor way more than we did in the beginning of the season when we first met up with them [a 58-38 Cardinals’ win]. So that opened up the lane for us, and we were able to get in there every time.”
The Eagles led 32-23 before back-to-back buckets by Derr, the second on a great feed inside from Nikki Harchut, got the Cardinals within five.
That appeared to be the margin entering the final frame as Wyse dribbled the ball out on the perimeter unaware of the clock ticking down. After taking a peek at the clock, Wyse handed off to Hinton, whose deep heave just before the buzzer swished through the net.
The Eagles continued to outmuscle the Cardinals down low early in the fourth and held a 47-36 lead with 3:10 to go after another great Hinton-to-Harris hook-up for a hoop before five straight points by Kristin Fuery followed by a Derr bucket trimmed the deficit to four at 49-45 with 15.8 seconds left.
“They didn’t give up, obviously,” said Catanzaro. “But you need that in the beginning of the game. That’s the second time in a row that we played them and it was the same thing: get behind, play back, get behind, play back.”
Matthews made the lead five after converting the first of two foul shots following an intentional foul on Courter for pulling her jersey while trying to foul. The Cardinals forced a turnover on the ensuing possession and, after Matthews was whistled for a technical for slamming the ball down after the turnover, had a chance to make it a one possession game.
But Fuery, the Cardinals’ sharp-shooter who missed her first eight shots from the field in a scoreless first half before rallying to score 12 points in the second, only made one of two. Wyse then sealed the win with a pair at the other end.
“We were very streaky,” said Harrison. “But I think the key in the first half was really paying attention to Kristin Fuery and paying a lot of attention to Danielle Derr. They missed a lot of layups and easy shots that would have hurt us in the end and I credit our defense for that.”
“We had our chances,” said Catanzaro. “We can’t complain. We had the chances all the way down to the end. They get the technical and we make a foul shot and get a timeout and a three and we’re back in the game.”
Derr paced the Cardinals with 14 points and nine rebounds. Harchut chipped in 10 points and 10 rebounds as well in the loss.
Harris led all scorers with 16 points to go along with eight rebounds, and Matthews added 11 points and 13 rebounds as the Eagles advanced to take on the winner of No. 1 Cheltenham vs. No. 32 William Tennent on Wednesday at a time to be determined.
“It starts tomorrow,” said Harrison on a possible matchup with top-seeded Cheltenham. “We’re going to back to work. Everyone is saying, ‘Wait, we don’t get a break?’ Absolutely not, are you crazy? We have to continue to work from here. We have a lot of things to work on. We’ll be going back and watching tape and trying to do anything that we can to come out and play as well as we have been playing against Cheltenham on Wednesday.”
NORRISTOWN 52, UPPER DUBLIN 46
Upper Dublin (46)—Bryant 1 2-3 4; Harchut 5 0-0 10; Fuery 4 1-2 12; Courter 1 0-0 2; Derr 7 0-0 14; Kane 0 0-2 0; Ellert 0 0-0 0; Hallowell 2 0-0 4; Marville 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 3-7 46.
Norristown (52)—Hinton 3 0-1 8; Wyse 3 3-6 9; Matthews 3 5-7 11; Rose 3 2-2 8; Harris 8 0-5 16; Graham 0 0-0 0; Blake 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 10-21 52.
Three-point goals: Fuery 3; Hinton 2
Upper Dublin 8 10 9 19—46
Norristown 15 4 16 17—52
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