In an SOL Featured Game sponsored by Millennium Administrators, Souderton picked up its second win in as many days. NP handed Cheltenham its first loss of the season. Check out off of Saturday’s action. To view photos of the Souderton/William Allen game, please visit the Photo Gallery.
FRANCONIA TWP – Seventeen days. Seventeen long days.
That’s how long it had been between wins for Souderton after jumping out of the gate to a 7-2 start this season, so it’s easy to understand why the frustration was mounting for an Indian squad that entered the season with decidedly high expectations.
“That was way too long, and it’s hard to keep your mind in the right place, stay focused and continue to get better and stay positive, but you have to do it,” senior Carley Kendall said.
A low point of the season came when the Indians stumbled to a 32-31 loss to Perkiomen Val
ley.
“It was just tough to know we have the potential to do so well, and we ended up losing those games,” sophomore Allison Gallagher said. “Even though (Central Bucks) South got better this year, it was tough to lose to them both times since we even beat them last year, and we have more potential this year.”
On Wednesday, it looked as though the Indians were about to snap out of their losing skid with a big win over Central Bucks East only to watch the Patriots knot the score on a late-game foul shot and then win it in overtime.
“The heartbreak of CB East and the games we should have won – that’s when it’s really hard to keep your mind straight,” senior Liz Mower said.
While no one was counting the CB East loss as a moral victory, it did give a ray of hope to the struggling Indians.
“It definitely gave us a sense of pride because we have never beat them, but we stuck with them,” Kendall said. “To go into overtime shows that we can do it and we have the potential, and it reinforced that.”
“But we know it still was a loss,” Mower said. “And we weren’t happy.”
Mower and her teammates were much happier on Saturday after the Indians’ 58-27 rout of William Allen on the heels of the Friday night’s 65-40 romp over Hatboro-Horsham.
The Indians opened the second half of Saturday’s game with three straight baskets on the inside – the first by Libby Wetzler and the next two by Kendall. After an Allison Gallagher fastbreak bucket, Mower buried a shot just inside the arc. The Canaries interrupted the Indians’ run with their first hoop of the third quarter, but on Souderton’s ensuing possession, Kendall came up with the rebound of a miss and kicked the ball outside to Mower, who buried a three.
“That’s the kind of balance we have been working on and have been improving on,” Kendall said. “It’s getting all parts of the game involved.”
It was the kind of play the Indians expected to see a lot of this season, and in their two most recent outings, Mower and Kendall have come up big.
Sparked by the 26-point effort of Kendall, the duo combined for 37 points in the win over Hatboro. Mower had 12 points in Saturday’s win while Kendall added 11.
“As a group effort, we have been focusing a lot on the balance of the game, getting the ball in just as much as taking outside shots,” Kendall said. “That finally clicked in the last two games.
“I feel like everyone has been frustrated. (Friday) night we went in saying we having nothing to lose, let’s just play our ‘A’ game, and that what we did.”
On Saturday, the Indians held a 12-9 lead over the winless Canaries at the end of one quarter and then used a 17-8 second quarter run to go into halftime with a 29-17 lead. An 18-4 third quartet put the game completely out of reach. For good measure, the Indians outscored the Canaries 11-6 in a final quarter that saw seniors Lindsey Kwiatkowski come off the bench to contribute six points while fellow seniors Jackie Kevolin, who buried a trey, and Cait Steinly also got their names in the scoring column.
Mower led the Indians with 12 points while Kendall added 11. Gabby McAndrews had nine points on three treys. Eleven players contributed scoring for the Indians, who were once again without the services of sophomore point guard Bianca Picard (injury).
“The last two nights the theme has been to progress,” coach Lynn Carroll said. “At this point in the season, we can’t afford to do something in this game that we wouldn’t do against better competition.
“That’s what it’s about – forming good habits and, regardless of the score, playing every play as if it really matters. I think we’re doing that to a higher degree.”
Carroll has been especially pleased to see the Indians get their inside-outside game untracked.
“The guards are looking to get it in, and the post players aren’t forcing it,” the Indians’ coach said. “It was again a well-rounded game. I love looking at the stats and in the (scoring) column seeing everyone’s name there.
“Unselfish team basketball – that’s what we need.”
The players are hoping that their recent performances are a preview of good things to come.
“I think these past two games and even part of the CB East game were the start,” Kendall said. “We know we can do it, and I think a lot of times after losing so many games, you kind of forget the potential you have.”
“We want to finish out strong,” Mower added. “Our last three games are tough ones, and we needed to try and get ready for them with Hatboro and today’s game, and that’s what we did.”
“We need to use this as motivation to push us through,” Gallagher said. “Since we were on a bad string, this will push us to go further.”
It might be easy for Gallagher – a sophomore – to say, ‘Wait until next year,’ but that certainly isn’t the case.
“After this year, we lose six seniors,” she said. “It will be hard to get that teamwork we have this year and all the experience we have this year.
“We have six seniors, and everyone has at least one year (varsity) experience except one freshman. It’s the year to do our best.”
WILLIAM ALLEN (27) – DaShanae Hardy 5 1-1 11; Alyx Santone 0 1-2 1; Kameelah Church 3 3-4 9; Tyesha Rodriguez 1 0-0 2; Jenn Weiss 1 0-0 2; Shalene Thompson 1 0-0 2. TOTALS 11 5-7 27
SOUDERTON (58) - Jackie Krevolin 1 0-0 3; Allison Gallagher 1 1-2 3; Liz Mower 4 2-3 12; Katie O’Connor 2 0-0 4; Gabby Andrews 3 0-0 9; Carley Kendall 5 1-4 11; Libby Wetzler 1 2-2 4; Cait Steinly 0 1-2 1; Lindsey Kwiatkowski 3 0-2 6; Sarah Derstein 2 0-0 4; Hailey Kaunert 0 1-2 1. TOTALS 22 8-17 58
William Allen9 8 4 6-27
Souderton 12 17 18 11-58
Three-point goals: McAndrews 3, Mower 2, Krevolin
THE REST OF THE SOL…
NORTH PENN 56, CHELTENHAM 43
What a difference a year makes. Or even a day for that matter.
Last year, the Maidens absorbed a 61-40 beating at the hands of the Lady Panthers. Much more recently, they dropped a 55-54 heartbreaker to Central Bucks West at the buzzer in the second overtime of Friday night’s SOL Continental Conference game.
If all of that might suggest the Maidens would struggle against a Lady Panther squad that brought a gaudy 17-0 record into Saturday’s game, guess again.
In a contest that provided the ultimate gut check, the Maidens – despite falling behind 10-0 out of the gate - passed with flying colors, frustrating the Lady Panthers at every turn.
“After last night’s loss, we were all ready down,” senior point guard Brenda McDermott said. “We came in early today, and we all came together and decided that today was basically like a playoff game, and we wanted to show everyone what kind of team we are.
“Last night was a tough loss, but it wasn’t going to affect us today. We were going to come out hard because we needed to win bad today.”
While the Lady Panthers had their first blemish on their record, the Maidens improved to 13-5, and no win was bigger than this one.
“I’m so proud of them,” Maiden coach Maggie deMarteleire said. “Especially after spotting them a 10-point lead, I thought it would be the same as last year.
“We took care of the ball, and we rebounded well, which are two keys to everything. Every quarter we did better defensively, and every quarter we did better offensively. I think we learned from our mistakes last night.”
The Maidens were led by the 17-point effort of senior Steph Knauer while Erin Maher added 16 – which included four treys – and Lauren Crisler had 15 points.
“I told John (Rogalski), my assistant that I always worry about teams that have good big kids, and this is a good team that has good big kids,” Cheltenham coach Bob Schaefer said of Knauer and Crisler. “Their other players aren’t weak. This is a team that should be very successful, and they showed it today. They stepped it up.
“We have been playing poorly and not as a team.”
Ciara ‘CC’ Andrews scored a game-high 25 points, but 17 of those came in the first half, and of greater concern to Schaefer was the fact that the remainder of his team combined for just 18 points.
“They were literally giving our third guard the wing, and for a while, we were letting them take the shots, but it was one and done with the way their forwards were dominating the boards,” Schaefer said. “They had a great game plan and they executed it well.”
Early on, the Lady Panthers had things going their way, and behind nine points from Andrews, they opened up an 18-11 lead at the end of one quarter.
“I don’t think it was our offense that was bringing us down,” McDermott said. “Our defense wasn’t clicking, and our offense seems to click when we’re playing really good defense.”
Momentum began to swing in North Penn’s favor in a second quarter that saw Maher score 11 points, which included three treys and a big three-pointer to trim the Lady Panthers’ lead to 28-24 at halftime.
“Erin’s hot hand kept us in the game,” deMarteleire said. “The more three’s she hit – it just kept building momentum, and the kids were getting more and more confident.”
Maher was coming off a three-point game against West less than 24 hours earlier.
“They call it a shooter’s mentality,” she said. “(Softball) coach (Rick) Torresani always says, ‘A shooter never stops shooting.’ He says it to me after every game.
“The mentality is to put it all behind you and focus on the next game because we really needed this game.”
A Crisler three-pointer to open the third quarter effectively set the tone for a second half that belonged to the Maidens. After a Cheltenham miss, Knauer turned an offensive rebound into a three-point play and a 30-28 Maiden lead.
“We have never encountered a team with two big girls who can get the ball and go back up with it,” Andrews said. “We need to work on boxing them out. That was a really big factor in the game – just two big bodies that will fight, will push and will make the shot.”
Andrews answered with a shot off the dribble to knot the score, but Crisler connected on a bucket in close.
Again, Andrews banked home a shot to knot the score. Later in the third quarter, the Lady Panthers took a 37-36 lead after a three-point play by Christina Coleman, but Crisler responded with a bucket at the other end that sent the Maidens into the fourth quarter with a 38-37 lead.
A Crisler steal set the stage for a Vicky Tumasz bucket, but another Andrews bucket pulled the Lady Panthers to within one. Andrews scored two more points the rest of the way, and a Knauer basket sparked an 8-2 run to give the Maidens a lead they would not relinquish.
“At the beginning, we played man-to-man, but that wasn’t doing it,” deMarteleire said. “We started sending Brenda (McDermott) with another defender at CC, so there would be two people on her.”
That defensive switch turned the tide firmly in the Maidens’ favor.
“We stepped up our defense,” McDermott said. “We were kind of flat in the beginning, but when we came out and we started doubling CC Andrews, we started creating turnovers, and that allowed us to open up our wings.
“Erin started hitting her shots, and Vicky, Steph and Lauren were all hitting down low, and it was a confidence booster. We knew that even when our shots weren’t falling on every possession, they were getting more frustrated because we were taking away their best player, CC. We knew if we would stay together then everything would come together for us.”
Andrews acknowledged that the Maidens’ defensive scheme created problems for the Lady Panthers.
“When they double me, there’s someone who is open,” she said. “We have to hit the shot when the person is open. You have to learn how to convert those shots. We have problems with those easy shots – we miss them.”
While the Maidens answered their heartbreaking loss to CB West less than 24 hours earlier with their biggest win of the season, the Lady Panthers will also find out what they’re made of by the way they respond to Saturday’s loss.
“Two things can happen,” Andrews said. “We can sulk and everyone can be mad, or we can come together and say, ‘You know what – we lost one, but we also won 17 games.’ We obviously know that we had trouble on the boards, so even though we’re not that big, we know we have to play big.
“We hate this feeling. We all hate this feeling. We’re going to come together as a team, work on what we need to. This is definitely a wake-up call.”
The Maidens might be a long shot to win the Continental Conference title after Friday’s loss to CB West, but they served notice that they will be heard from come district playoff time.
“After last night, we knew that loss was going to take us down in our (district) seeding,” Maher said. “We were talking – we felt bad because we felt like we were going to ruin it for our seniors. We wanted to make it a special year for our seniors.
“That’s been our goal. We treated this game like it was a playoff game.”
“If we beat Cheltenham, the number one team in the district, we can beat anyone,” McDermott said. “We just have to have the mindset.”
The Lady Panthers, meanwhile, will have to find a way to regroup as they head down the home stretch of the regular season.
“I told them – this game is over,” Schaefer said. “I don’t even know if it’s going to affect the seedings, but now we’re going to see how we rise to the occasion.
“I said, ‘No one expected you to be 17-0.’ We expected to lose a game. We’ll see what we do getting it together.”
Andrews, for one, is hoping the Lady Panthers have another shot at the Maidens this season.
“We beat them pretty good last year, and they came back and beat us pretty good,” she said. “We would love to play them again, we would love it.”
EMMAUS 51, PLYMOUTH WHITEMARSH 48
Erin Martin scored a game-high 24 points, and teammate Simone Jacques added 10 points, but it wasn’t enough. Emmaus led 16-6 at the end of one quarter and took a 27-16 lead into halftime before the Colonials (7-10) staged a furious second-half comeback, outscoring Emmaus 19-6 in the third quarter to go on top 35-33 only to watch Emmaus answer with an 18-13 fourth quarter to earn the win.
OWEN J ROBERTS 48, PENNRIDGE 44
The Rams (3-13) battled the Wildcats for four quarters but came up just short in a game that capped their Community Day activities. Pennridge led 12-11 at the end of one quarter, but the Wildcats answered with a 15-9 second quarter to go into halftime with a 26-21 lead. The Wildcats outscored the Rams 12-11 in the third quarter before the Rams came back to win the fourth quarter 12-10.
Jen Cooley and Shannon Chynoweth led the Rams with 12 points each while Jessie Dominic, Kaeli White and Jessie Tennett each added six points.
- Log in to post comments
