Thrown off stride: Foul trouble hampers Fillies in semifinal loss to Blackhawk
McMURRAY – Laurel Highlands has relied on a solid starting five to carry it to one of its greatest girls basketball seasons in the program’s history.
The Fillies’ Achilles heel has been its lack of depth and that presented a problem in their WPIAL Class AAAA semifinal playoff game against top-seeded Blackhawk on Tuesday night.
Laurel Highlands’ Ayrianna Sumpter ran into early foul trouble and the Lady Cougars took advantage when she was relegated to the bench to seize control on their way to a 51-32 victory at Peters Township High School’s AHN Arena.
Alena Fusetti scored 21 points, including a 14-of-16 performance at the foul line, and Aubree Hupp added 16 as Blackhawk (22-2) advanced to Saturday’s championship game against No. 2 North Catholic.
“When your leading scorer gets in foul trouble and you have to pull her out of the game, not only does the point production go down but that makes us adjust defensively,” LH coach Stewart Davis said. “That made us go man-to-man and they’re a pretty well-oiled machine. They run their sets well.
“Then on defense they took us completely out of what we wanted to do. Hat’s off to that team.”
The fifth-seeded Fillies (20-3), who had already secured a spot in the PIAA tournament, will play at No. 3 Elizabeth Forward, 7 p.m. Thursday, in a placement game for third and fourth place in the WPIAL.
Davis chalked up the game as a significant learning experience for his young squad which has no seniors.
“This is definitely huge for them to get to this point and play on this stage,” said Davis, who took over a team that had won one game two years ago and upped that total to 11 wins and a playoff berth last year and 20 wins and a spot in the district final four for the first time since 1998 under Rick Hauger this season.
“We weren’t on anyone’s radar at all starting out this season. We came out of nowhere. My team’s young and they’re hungry. This is going to leave a sting. Next year, even with the realignment, hopefully we’re still right back here again.”
Miya Harris hit four 3-pointers in scoring a team-high 14 points and Sumpter managed to drop in nine points for Laurel Highlands, which also got five points from Aierra Jenkins.
The first quarter was a defensive struggle that ended in a 6-6 deadlock with the Fillies’ points coming on 3-pointers by Taylor Irwin, to open the scoring, and Harris.
Sumpter was tagged with her third foul with 1:08 left in the opening frame and was on the bench for much of the second quarter as Blachhawk outscored Laurel Highlands 16-4 to take a 22-10 halftime lead.
LH’s sixth girl, 5-foot-4 Righteous Richardson, played admirably but the 5-11 multi-talented Sumpter’s absence was clearly felt by the Fillies, who had 10 of their 23 turnovers in the second quarter.
“The type of team they are, they want to pressure you, they want to speed you up,” Davis said of Blackhawk. “We had a few turnovers they scored off of and that’s going to happen. We knew most of their scoring production comes off their defense. When they were in their offensive half set I think we did pretty well defensively. But they wear you down on both ends of the floor, defensively by getting into you and pressuring you, and offensively because there’s a lot of motion sets they run.”
The Lady Cougars, who got to the foul line 27 times and made 24, compared to seven of 10 for LH, pushed their lead up to 39-20 after three quarters.
The Fillies never lost their composure and kept fighting as they whittled the gap to 13 points three times in the fourth quarter but could get no closer.
“My team never gives up,” Davis said. “If anything, we started to play our ball. It was just a little too late. We didn’t have enough time on the clock. My girls didn’t quit and I thought they played hard.”
Davis noted an area he hopes his team can improve on.
“The only thing we lacked tonight is we didn’t match their physicality,” Davis said. “They’re a scrappy team. We didn’t match them half court-wise. They took us out of our sets. That’s something we have to work on. If you look at the three losses that we have against EF and this team, they’re scrappy teams.”
Laurel Highlands has at least two more games remaining with Thursday’s consolation game and the PIAA postseason looming.
When asked if he thought at the beginning of the season his team would be in the state playoffs, Davis shook his head.
“No, I did not,” Davis said. “I will say this team is resilient and they worked hard to get to this point.”