Waynesburg gives Moon tough battle before falling, 60-51
UPPER ST. CLAIR – Moon’s boys basketball team is bigger, stronger and a bit quicker than Waynesburg Central’s squad. However, none of those deficiencies prevented the Raiders, the bottom (12th) seed in the WPIAL Class AAA playoffs, from giving the fifth-seeded Tigers a tremendous battle before falling by a 60-51 count at Upper St. Clair High School on Wednesday night.
“We have kids with a lot of character and a lot of heart,” Waynesburg coach Ed Zelich said. “They’re not afraid of anything. They were never nervous.”
Duane Compo led Moon with 21 points, Ryan Helfrich followed with 16, and bulky A.Q. Shipley tallied 14 points while giving Waynesburg fits inside.
As usual, the Raiders (18-7) were led by P. J. Schumacher, a 1,000-point scorer who ended his sterling high school career with a game-high 23-point effort, including three 3-pointers. Billy Becker hit a pair of treys in adding 10 points for Waynesburg.
Moon (18-7) could never completely shake the determined Raiders and was forced to play a much slower tempo than it desires, but did enough to pull out the win, which is all Tigers coach Jeff Ackerman was worried about.
“I told our guys that in these playoffs, our goal is to advance,” Ackerman said.
The Raiders made that goal tougher than expected, though.
“They did exactly what we thought they were going to do,” Ackerman said. “Offensively, we expected them to slow it down and make our big guys come out and play them. They had a good game plan.
“They’re a well-coached team, and they gave us all we could handle.”
Moon looked dominant in the early going when it powered its way to a 10-4 lead, but Waynesburg regrouped and ran off the final eight points of the period to go up 15-12.
A three-point play by Shipley and a bucket by M.J. Knight to open the second period pushed Moon back on top. Aaron Carpenter scored on a pass from Scott Cree to pull the Raiders even one last time, 17-17, before a jumper by Helfrich and a 3-pointer by Compo put the Tigers in front to stay.
Still, the game was far from over.
Moon took its biggest lead, 37-27, on Compo’s basket inside late in the third period. The Raiders’ P.J. Schumacher then hit a 3-pointer while the Tigers were committing a foul, which gave Waynesburg possession again. Schumacher took advantage of the opportunity by nailing a jumper and suddenly it was 37-32.
Shipley’s three-point play made it 40-32, but Nathan Stoner scored on a pass from Cory Walsh as Waynesburg ended the frame down by six.
The Raiders made a push for the lead early in the fourth period. Schumacher swished a trey, then Stoner, who blocked a shot to foil two consecutive Moon possessions, pulled Waynesburg within one with he followed a miss by Schumacher.
With his team clinging to a precarious 40-39 advantage, Ackerman called time out with 6:08 left and instructed his team to go into a delay on offense.
Waynesburg waited for a short time, then Zelich instructed his team to go into a trapping defense. Shipley was fouled, missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Stoner grabbed the rebound for Waynesburg.
Helfrich came up with the play of the game at that point, stealing the ball and scoring inside to ignite a seven-point burst that put the Tigers back in charge with a 47-39 lead.
“If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve waited and waited and waited,” Zelich said. “But how do you tell kids not to play? We were playing well at that time.”
Schumacher hit two free throws to cut the gap to six, and nailed another 3-pointer with 2:53 remaining to pull the Raiders within five, but they could get no closer.
Compo put the final nails in Waynesburg’s coffin by sinking four straight free throws in the final 40 seconds.
“We just made too many turnovers,” said Zelich, whose team wound up with 23. “But Moon has a nice team. They beat Blackhawk, who is the No. 1 seed, by 15 points last week, so they’re a good basketball team.”