To view game action photos, visit the Photo Gallery by clicking on the following link: http://photos.suburbanonesports.com/
HORSHAM – Emily Leer looked like an embattled warrior.
The Abington senior – a wad of gauze in her nose to stop a nose bleed she received early in the fourth quarter – dribbled the ball at midcourt and looked to the bench for instructions.
The Ghosts held a tenuous 36-33 lead over second-seeded Council Rock North with under three minutes remaining in Wednesday night’s District One AAAA semifinal game, and although at 6-2, Leer does not look like your typical ball handler, the ball was firmly in her hands with the game on the line.“When we’re playing against tough guards like that, I want the ball away from their hands,” said Leer of sisters Devin and Lauren Gold, who have made a career out of stealing the ball from opponents. “It’s not that I want the ball away from my guards’ hands, I just want it away from the Gold sisters.
“It’s very, very stressful. The whole time I kept looking at the scoreboard, ‘Okay, we’re leading, but if they hit a three and a two, they’ll be winning.’ I was calculating the whole time, and even though we were up, the margin was too small to get any confidence that we were definitely going to pull it out.”
The Ghosts – who trailed by 13 in the first quarter – did pull it out, holding on for a 43-38 win and earning a coveted berth in the district title game.
The final horn had barely sounded when Leer leaped into teammate Aiyannah Peal’s arms.
For the first time in 35 years, the Ghosts will be playing for a district title when they take on neighboring Cheltenham in Friday night’s title game at Villanova University, and while everyone on the Ghosts’ sidelines was celebrating the big win, perhaps no one was enjoying it more than Leer, who has accepted a basketball scholarship to play at Villanova.
“This is really my dream game to be playing Abington’s rival (Cheltenham) that we never got to play during the regular season at the school I’m going to be going to,” Leer said. “It’s a feeling you can’t really describe.
“Winning games like this – I have only experienced this type of feeling really once before with my Fencor team when we got third in the nation. It’s an emotional rush you can’t describe. It was just pure bliss.”
Making the Ghosts’ win even more impressive was the fact that they rallied from an early 15-2 deficit to earn the win.
“I’m so happy for them,” coach Dan Marsh said. “I’m so happy for Emily and for Lauren Peretti and for everybody. I’m ecstatic. I don’t even know what to say.“They battled and battled and battled. It wasn’t pretty, but our games never are. We’ll take it.”
As the final giddy seconds ticked off the scoreboard clock, the reality began to hit home that the Ghosts –seeded sixth in the tournament - were heading back to the district final game for the first time since 1975 when Abington won the district title.
“It feels wonderful,” junior Chynna West said. “I have never been in this position before.
“We’re playing our archrival Cheltenham on Friday, and we’re going to keep on going. We’re not stopping until we’re done. Some of us might never get this chance ever again, and we want to make it last.”
“Oh my god, I’m so happy,” Peal said. “We just played the way we know how.
“We knew we were going to come back. It wasn’t going to be a blow out the whole game. We relied on our defense. That’s our motto – ‘Defense.’”
While the Ghosts celebrated, a tearful Indian squad steamed out of the locker room. Senior Sarah Kiely, for one, had no explanation for what went wrong after a fast start.
“I just think we got intimidated by Emily Leer’s presence inside,” she said. “I think we didn’t want to take that chance (of going inside) because we were afraid of what the outcome would be.
“We just didn’t establish our inside game at all during the entire game. It’s really disappointing. It’s my senior year, and the one thing I wanted to do was make the district championship. Last year we lost four games straight (to end the season), and we wanted to win all the games in districts and make it far into states.”
Kiely finished the night with just six points – all in the first quarter. Devin Gold led Rock North with 10 points while Lauren Gold and Megan Cunningham each added eight points.
Leer led the Ghosts with 15 points – 13 in an inspired second half. Peal also came up huge, scoring 13 points while West added eight.
The win avenged a pair of regular season losses to the National Conference champion Indians, including a heartbreaker in the last week of the regular season that saw the Ghosts’ cough up a lead late in the game
“It’s actually pretty funny because the two games we lost we held the lead for most of the game, and they came back and won it,” Leer said. “So clearly, they needed to be leading in order for us to win, so it worked out good.”In truth, there was nothing to suggest that the Ghosts would even be in the game after they found themselves staring at a 15-4 deficit at the end of one quarter.
“We were nervous,” Marsh said. “No doubt about it – our girls came out tight, and they came out and made some big shots. We had hands in their faces, but they were hot.
“I told the girls, ‘Keep your patience, keep your composure, and we’ll get back in this one.’”
Cold shooting, according to Leer, also didn’t help.
“We came out – I missed a couple of shots, we all missed a couple of shots, and we couldn’t stop them,” the senior captain said. “They were getting offensive rebounds on us. We really just came out flat, and they played phenomenal.
“They hit every shot they took, and we couldn’t hit anything. I said, ‘Guys, we’re fine. We played awful, and everyone knows that, but we still have three quarters left. We can’t play worse. It can only get better from here.’ I think the nerves were getting to us.”
The Ghosts’ comeback began in earnest in the second quarter.
West got things started by scoring on a putback, but Lauren Gold answered with a basket at the other end. Peal scored for the Ghosts, and after a Rock North miss, Jamie Shectman hit nothing but net on a three, and just like that, the deficit had been trimmed to five (17-12).
A West basket after an offensive rebound made it a 17-14 game, and when Peal scored on a tough turnaround in the paint, it was a one-point game.
“I don’t know,” Rock North coach Lou Palkovics said. “My assistants just said that it just seemed like after the last game (a 59-27 win over Great Valley) having it come so easy and having all your shots fall and jumping out 15-2 in this one, I think they kind of thought they were going to roll over. “I knew they weren’t going to roll over, and once our shots stops falling, we got really tight. We did not look inside. We never went inside once.”
Kelly Scull broke a four-minute scoring drought for the Indians with a bucket, but Peal answered in the closing seconds, trimming the Indians’ lead to 19-18 heading into the intermission.
“We wanted this game so much, and we didn’t care – we weren’t going to give up, no matter what,” West said. “In the second quarter, they came out and scored four points all together, and we were determined.”
The Ghosts took their first lead of the game when Peal banked home a shot on the Ghosts’ opening possession of the third quarter. When Leer converted a three-point play midway through the quarter, the Ghosts led 27-23, but by the end of the quarter, the Indians had cut that lead to two (29-27).
It was still a two-point game early in the final quarter, and the Indians still trailed by just three after Cunningham buried a pair of foul shots midway through the frame (36-33). A Rock North turnover set the stage for Peal finding Leer cutting to the hole, and the Ghosts led 38-33.
“In the locker room (at halftime), we gathered ourselves and came out calm and never panicked,” Peal said.
The Ghosts extended that lead to seven after Leer sank both ends of a one-and-one. The Indians trimmed that lead to four but would get no closer.
“We work as a team,” West said. “Most of us have never been in this position before with this much pressure on us.
“I’ve never been in this situation before, and the nerves kick in, but I knew I had to pull it out. We had to work as a team and finish it off, and that’s what we did.”
The Ghosts will take on Cheltenham at Villanova at 7 p.m.
ABINGTON 43, COUNCIL ROCK NORTH 38
Abington 4 14 11 14-43
Council Rock North 15 4 8 11-38
Abington (43) – Shectman 1 0-0 3; West 4 0-0 8; Schmidt 2 0-0 4; Peal 5 3-6 13; Leer 5 5-6 15; Listenbee 0 0-0 0; Longo 0 0-0 0; Peretti 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 17 8-12 43.
Council Rock North (43) – D.Gold 3 3-3 10; L.Gold 3 2-2 8; Grundman 1 0-0 2; Kiely 2 1-1 6; Cunningham 3 2-2 8; Scull 1 0-0 2; Marrazzo 1 0-0 2. TOTALS 14 8-8 38.
3-point goals: Abington – Shectman. CR North – D. Gold, Kiely.
- Log in to post comments
0
