ELK CC 38, WEST FOREST 34

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March 6, 2010 - District 9 Class A Girls' Championship

Box Score

By Rich Rhoades

CLARION – Time to get out the clichés. And for repeating champion Elk County Catholic Lady Crusaders coach Ken Pistner, can you really blame him?

In the District 9 Class A Championship game Saturday at Clarion University’s Waldo S. Tippin Gymnasium, ECC limited West Forest to dreadful 18 percent shooting from the field, yet still had to fight off the Lady Indians in a 38-34 victory.

“We say defense wins championships and that was our motto all year long,” said Pistner, pulling out the cliché, but a very true phrase in his team’s case. “We lost a lot of scoring last year and knew we’d be a low-scoring team this year, but we thought could be a better defensive team. The kids really bought into that and really executed.”

Senior forward Emily Detsch, the lone returning starter from last year’s title team and one of just three players who saw any significant minutes on varsity last year, led the charge with 19 points.

“We’re very excited,” Detsch said. “We lost four starters and a ton of seniors and we knew we’d have to work our butts off and it paid off.”

Detsch was the team’s second leading scorer last year, but hiked her scoring average to over 17 points per game and ranks fifth in the district.

“I can’t say enough about Emily. She’s the glue for this basketball team and she deserves a lot of credit for what’s going on,” Pistner said. “It’s easy to coach when you have a really good player.”

“I knew I had to step up and be a leader this year because last year we had equal scoring,” Detsch said. “This year, I worked really hard and stepped up.”

But ECC’s defensive effort took the whole team, with a significant nod to junior guard Emily Gregory, who drew the defensive assignment on West Forest’s high-scoring senior guard Geena Sneeringer.

Sneeringer, who came into the game needing 19 points to reach 2,000 for her career, had a lousy night shooting, finishing with 12 points and nine rebounds on just 3-of-15 shooting from the floor.

Sneeringer was also 4-of-9 from the foul line. But despite West’s big problems shooting the ball the whole game, there she was with a chance to tie the game with two free throws in a one-and-one situation with ECC leading 33-31 with 1:57 left in the game.

Sneeringer misfired and the Lady Crusaders eventually pulled away to capture their first back-to-back titles in their history. It’s the fourth Class A championship overall, with the first two coming in 1987 and 1989.

West Forest, runners-up to Coudersport a year ago, is still looking for its first district title period, dating back to its District 10 days as well.

“We beat a very good basketball team tonight,” Pistner said. “Geena’s one of the all-time best in the district and it was a really impressive job by our defense tonight. I never expected to put this team away in any shape or form. I knew this was going down to the wire. They’re too good of a team not to make a run at us.

“They’re going to come back and play hard. I give Coach Wachob a great deal of credit. Those girls worked hard for four years and accomplished a lot.”

Aside from a 1-0 deficit to start the game, ECC never trailed, leading 11-6 after one quarter and 21-14 at halftime even though West had missed 23 of 27 shots from the field.

The Lady Crusaders opened the second half with a 6-2 run to extend to their largest lead of the game at 11 points, 27-16. But West Forest would get it back to within three points at 31-28 by the end of the third quarter.

Sneeringer, who missed all seven shot from the floor in the first half and scored just one point, scored 14 points in the second half. Her free throw got West to within 31-29 with 6:11 left in the fourth quarter.

After a Karly Carnovale jumper put ECC up 33-29 with 5:36 remaining, the teams went scoreless for over the next two minutes. Two Alyssa Dreihaup free throws got West to back within two at 33-31 with 3:13 remaining.

Nobody would score again until 53 seconds remaining when Gregory’s free  throw gave ECC a 34-31 advantage. After another missed West Forest shot, ECC ran some critical time off the clock and Gregory’s sharp pass to Lexie Meholic for a layup virtually sealed the deal and gave ECC a 36-31 lead with 24 seconds remaining.

Abbi Petrosky came off the bench to score eight points for ECC. Taylor Frank led the Lady Crusaders with seven rebounds.

Amanda Carll also reached double figures in scoring for West with 11 points to go along with eight rebounds. Rachel Greathouse scored six points and led the team with 10 rebounds.

Next up for both teams is the PIAA state playoffs next Saturday, both at a District 9 site and time to be determined. ECC (23-4) plays Rochester, the WPIAL fifth seed, while West Forest (22-4) faces District 5 third-place finisher Southern Fulton.