To view action photos of both the Upper Dublin/CR South and North Penn/Methacton games, visit the photo gallery at the following link: http://photos.suburbanonesports.com/
Bensalem copped top honors for delivering the comeback of the night in SOL opening night action on Friday.
The Owls appeared to be down for the count, trailing visiting Norristown 31-17 after turning the ball over on their first two possessions of the second half.
“I thought it was over,” coach Don Bogan said.
The Owls’ coach called a timeout to talk to his young team.
“We went out and threw it away again, but then we just started playing better,” Bogan said.
‘Better’ hardly covers it in this case.
The Owls played shutdown defense and benefitted from the hot hand of senior Judy Sokol, who scored 18 second-half points as the Owls rallied to stage an improbable 49-41 come-from-behind win over the stunned Eagles.
“What happened was we put a 2-2-1 press on, and Sokol took the game over,” Bogan said. “She’s a soccer player, and she missed some games last year for soccer tournaments, but she did a good job in the playoffs.
“She had two threes – she had 10 points in the third quarter and got us back in the game.”
The Owls took their first lead at 39-38 and never looked back.
“All of a sudden it was like a light went on, and they played basketball,” Bogan said. “Our defense was awesome in the second half. We went to a matchup zone, and they really played well.
“I’m hoping they gained confidence. I’m very proud of them. They played hard.”
Making contributions that won’t show up in the boxscore were freshmen Tyra Roberts, who is 6-1, and Ashita Cooper.
“Tyra rebounds well, she blocks shots, and she’s a big body, and that helped us a lot,” Bogan said. “Ashita Cooper is very quick and might be the most natural player on my team. “
Bensalem lost its entire starting lineup to graduation with Alexis Nyekan the lone player to receive significant playing time, and the Owls have just three seniors on their roster.
“I have a good group of young kids that are very aggressive and worked hard in the offseason,” Bogan said. “We’re very young, and before the game they were really nervous.
“The second quarter was the worst quarter of basketball I have seen in five years. We were just horrible in the second quarter, but I made a commitment that I’m not going to go crazy on the girls or get upset because they’re so young. I want them to learn to play the game right, and they played the game right in the second half. They did a lot of nice things.”
The Owls won’t have much time to celebrate. They travel to Conwell Egan for a non-league contest on Saturday.
Cold as ice – Cheltenham couldn’t find its shooting touch and trailed for the better part of Friday night’s opener against Spring-Ford at the Hazleton Tournament.
“It’s nine degrees up here, and our shooting was colder,” coach Bob Schaefer said
The Lady Panthers – who connected on just 15-of-56 shots - trailed 16-14 at halftime and saw that deficit grow to seven (29-22) at the end of three quarters.
“I said to them in the locker room at halftime, ‘This is unbelievable that we can play like this. You play harder in practice,’” Schaefer said.
Cheltenham still trailed by seven midway through the final quarter when Schaefer – who went to an all-guard lineup - turned up the defensive pressure several notches.
The Lady Panthers outscored the Rams 24-8 in the final quarter to escape with a 46-39 win.
Senior Shayla Felder led the charge, scoring 16 of her game-high 22 points in the second half.
“We put more pressure on them fullcourt, got some loose balls and went into the Shayla foul shooting mode,” Schaefer said of his senior guard, who buried 9-of-12 from the charity stripe.
Ciara Andrews also came up big for the Lady Panthers, contributing eight points.
“Liz Taliafarro did a great job on defense and had a great steal for a layup, and so did Shayla and Ciara,” Schaefer said.
Sophomore Christina Coleman had six rebounds for the Lady Panthers, who will face the winner of the Hazleton/Abington Heights game in Saturday’s title contest.
Cold as Ice, Part II – North Penn just might have the corner of the market when it comes to cold shooting performances. In Friday night’s opener against Methacton, the Maidens connected on just one-of-21 shots from the perimeter as they struggled against the Warriors’ two-three zone.
“We’ll see two-three zones the rest of the year,” coach Maggie deMarteleire said. “Why would teams play anything else?”
At halftime, the Maidens found themselves on the short end of an 18-12 score.
“Twelve points in a half is ridiculous,” deMarteleire said.
Amazingly, North Penn – despite its offensive woes - was still in it at the end, but with the score deadlocked 33-33, Methacton senior Lauren Ruhl buried a pair of foul shots, and when the Maidens turned the ball over at the other end, the Warriors capitalized, scoring at the buzzer for a 37-33 win over the Maidens.
“We played better in the second half,” deMarteleire said.
But it wasn’t enough, and the Maidens, who were led by the nine-point effort of senior Taylour Alston, will face Upper Dublin in Saturday’s consolation game at 3 p.m.
Rock solid – Alex Wheatley and Chelsea Allen both contributed double-doubles in Council Rock South’s easier-than-expected 55-32 win over Upper Dublin in the opening round of the Methacton Tournament. Allen had 14 points and 12 boards while Wheatley had 14 points and 11 rebounds.
The 6-2 Wheatley also was assigned the task of containing Holy Cross-bound Kristen Fuery, who finished the night with just eight points.
“We just tried to shut down Fuery,” coach Monica Young said of her team’s game plan. “We just wanted to be aware of where she was all the time.
“We told Alexa not to help on anyone else. She (Fuery) likes to shoot from the outside, and she didn’t get any wide open looks.”
The Golden Hawks, who led 17-8 at the end of one quarter and 31-14 at the intermission, also dominated the backboards.
Freshman Alexis Hoffstaedter contributed 11 points and four assists in an impressive debut.
The Golden Hawks will face Methacton in Saturday’s title game at 4:30 p.m.
Welcome back – Sam Simononis returned to the lineup for Pennridge after spending her junior high school season at Allentown Central Catholic, and boy, are the Rams glad to have her back.
In the Rams’ 44-37 win over a pesky Christopher Dock squad in the opener of their own tournament, the senior guard scored 16 points and came within one steal of getting a most unorthodox double-double, finishing the game with nine steals, four rebounds and two blocked shots.
“She plays good deny defense – she anticipates the next pass and jumps into the passing lanes,” coach Brooke Martin said. “Do those little things, and you’re going to come up with steals.”
With the Pioneers making a concerted effort of prevent Simononis and backcourt mate Jordan Dominic from hurting them from the outside, Simononis began driving to the hole.
With impressive results.
The senior guard took 11 trips to the foul and buried 10
“I’m just trying to create opportunities for my teammates and myself,” Simononis said. “They definitely did not let us have an open opportunity shooting, but that made us work even harder and take it to the hoop more. We also were getting them in foul trouble.”
The game exacted a toll on the Rams, and as Jordan Dominic was leaving the gym, she had a bag of ice on the badly bruised knuckles of her right hand, the result of a fall early in the game.
“I don’t know what happened – I heard a pop, but I can’t not play,” the senior point guard said. “It was my first game. I didn’t want to sit out. I had to play through it.”
Dominic finished the game with 11 points – eight in the pivotal fourth quarter when the Rams finally put the game away.
The Pioneers led 17-16 at halftime, but Simononis scored nine points in the third quarter as the Rams opened up a 29-27 lead. They still led by just two when sophomore Alyssa Marchunsky buried a pair from the foul line, and after a Dock miss, Dominic buried her first of two treys to put the Rams on top 40-33.
Dock would get no closer than five the rest of the way.
When it was over, Simononis acknowledged it was good to be back home.
“It feels great,” she said. “I’m so excited to play with the girls. Everyone welcomed me back with open arms, and it’s a good feeling.
“I’m so happy to work hard with them and hopefully get some more wins.”
The Rams will face LC in Saturday’s title game at 6 p.m.
Titans roll – In an opening round game of the Springfield (Delco) Tournament, Central Bucks South used a 22-4 fourth-quarter scoring explosion to blow open a close game with Unionville, rolling to a 59-33 win.
Interestingly, the Titans held just a 25-20 halftime lead.
“Both team had a couple of missed shots and turnovers to start the third quarter, and we were just kind of maintaining where we were,” coach Beth Mattern said. “The last two minutes of the third quarter, things fell our way. We turned it up a notch.”
The Titans received balanced scoring – senior point guard Kaycee Schaefer, senior Nicole Mummert and junior Brittany Kaewell each had 11 points. Brooke Eise and Katelyn Schneider each had eight points while Gab Vass had seven points and eight rebounds. Mumert also had eight boards, and Schaefer had seven assists in what was the consummate team effort.
So what changed in a second half that saw the Titans go on a 34-13 roll?
“We finished shots, and we got some more defensive stops than we did in the first half,” Mattern said. “Things just clicked, and a lot of it was attributed to the defensive effort. We got some nice stops on the defensive end and converted a couple of transition layups, we went to the foul line a couple of times, and we drained a three-pointer.
“The girls were very unselfish – they looked for each other. Things just fell into place for us in the fourth quarter.”
In the first half, the Titans were 6-for-16 from three-point land.
“They were giving us the pass for the wide open three, and we just can’t turn that down,” Mattern said.
The Titans will face Springfield – a 53-20 winner over Penn Wood - in Saturday’s 4 p.m. title game.
Around the SOL – Daniella Ciccarone was unstoppable in Quakertown’s 50-40 win over Upper Merion in the opening round of Upper Merion’s own tournament on Friday night. The senior guard torched the Vikings for 27 points, which included a 15-of-21 effort from the foul line. She also had eight rebounds and five assists. Teammate Lauren Starzecky had a team-high 12 rebounds while Kristine Jackiewicz had nine points. The Panthers will face Conestoga in Saturday’s title game at 8 p.m.
Springfield used a dazzling offensive performance to make easy business of Marple-Newtown on Friday night. The Spartans received a dazzling 27-point effort from Annie Crudele while Elise DiFilippo added 17 points in an impressive supporting role. The Spartans, who actually trailed 15-14 at the end of one quarter, blew the game wide open with a 23-11 fourth-quarter explosion.
Liz and Sarah Martin provided a deadly one-two punch for Central Bucks East in its non-league opener at Plymouth Whitemarsh. Liz led all scorers with 21 points – she had nine of those in the first quarter and nine more in the third quarter when the Patriots, who led by eight at the half, opened up a 41-24 lead on their way to a 57-37 win. The Colonials were led by the 12-point effort of Kelly Hackenbrack.
Upper Moreland received 11 points from Christie Graf but it wasn’t enough as Lower Moreland earned a 38-18 win.
Hatboro-Horsham earned a berth in the title game of its own tournament with a 55-33 rout of Northeast. Abington also will play for the title in its own tournament, thanks to the Ghosts’ 47-28 win over Central Bucks West on Friday.
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