Connellsville girls defeat Laurel Highlands
CONNELLSVILLE – Near the end of the third quarter, Connellsville found itself in a tight ball game and Laurel Highlands had all of the momentum. The Fillies had run off seven points in a row to climb to within a point of the Lady Falcons, 29-28.
But Connellsville scored five straight in the last eight seconds of the quarter and the first nine of the fourth quarter to take a 43-28 lead that turned into a 55-46 non-section girls basketball win at Connellsville Monday night.
“Basic basketball” was how Connellsville coach Kim Jacobs described a basket her team scored off a timeout called with 2.6 seconds left in the third, but it would also describe how the Lady Falcons turned the game in their favor.
After Megan Saylor nailed a three-pointer with eight seconds left in the third, Connellsville got one of LH’s 31 turnovers with 2.6 seconds on the clock. Saylor inbounded to Erica Bartholow, who sent a perfect bounce pas back to Saylor for a layup just ahead of the buzzer.
Basic basketball, indeed.
The fourth quarter was more of the same, including 11-of-14 free throw shooting, offensive rebounding and layups. The Lady Falcons took a few minutes off the clock with crisp passing in a motion offense that forced the Fillies to foul.
Saylor and Bartholow paced Connellsville with 14 and 12 points, respectively, while Maressa Guynn and Meg Mahoney led LH with 17 and 10 points. Guynn added nine rebounds and four blocked shots.
All in all, however, it was far from a crisply played game. Connellsville had 28 turnovers of its own, so the teams combined for 59 missed opportunities.
“It was organized chaos,” Jacobs said. “We had a lot of players out there just running around, they are just in a big hurry. What we needed was someone with a calming effect. Kelly Barko is pretty good in that sense and so is Megan Saylor.”
Those two were in the game in the fourth quarter, when the Lady Falcons turned the ball over only five times, their fewest in any quarter.
“But we’re young and we’ll get better as a team at that,” Jacobs said. “Of the 12 girls we have, six of them are new to the program this year. Five of them are freshmen and Gabby (Carbonara) missed two years with an ACL injury.
“This is why we play exhibition games. By the time we play section games, we can work these bugs out and be ready to play.”
Laurel Highlands coach Jerry Slampak wishes he had the luxury of waiting until January to begin section play.
The Fillies play their Section 3-AAA opener Thursday at Ringgold. While he’s hoping to have Ashley Haragos back from an ankle injury by then, Slampak wasn’t very pleased with what he saw Monday against the Section 1-AAAA Lady Falcons.
“We didn’t execute, we didn’t run an offense and we had too many unforced errors,” Slampak said. “Connellsville came right at us and put us back on our heels. A lot of our turnovers were just a lack of concentration.
“We scrimmaged Upper St. Clair, Hempfield and Greensburg Central Catholic and thought we did fairly well against them, but we haven’t played anywhere near our potential in the last two games.”