North Penn upset previously undefeated Cheltenham on Saturday.
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 already 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
