Avonworth too much for J-M
CHURCHILL – Some nights, mercy clocks should run during warm-up drills.
Last night was one of those nights as Avonworth defeated Jefferson-Morgan, 73-23, in the first round of the WPIAL Class A girls playoffs. “We just ran into a buzzsaw,” said J-M coach Larry Kraft. “I knew we’d have to play our hearts out to stay with that team and that was quite obvious to see. They should go a long ways.”
Avonworth is but a second-place team out of Section 4, but it’s the No. 3 seed in Class A and improved to 21-3 with the win.
Does such a large margin of victory label Avonworth as the team to beat?
“No,” said Avonworth coach Bob Schulz. “I’ll be honest with you, I think there are a lot of good basketball teams in Class A. North Catholic’s ranked No. 1 in the state. Mt. Alvernia in our section is outstanding. I think Monessen and Serra are outstanding. I think Vincentian’s outstanding. They’re the fourth-place team from our section and they won by 30 the other night. So I just think it was a good first game for us. We looked good tonight, but we have to do that consistently throughout the tournament.”
It was no contest. Jefferson-Morgan (12-12) entered the game with a quality ball handler in Ashley Phillips and a shooting threat in Lindsay Olson, but it wasn’t nearly enough for the quality unit Avonworth put on the court, led by junior forward Morgan Locher. She only scored 13 points, but was the central figure in the Avonworth offense. She was complemented by senior Taylor Gallupe, who led all players with 18 points. Six-foot backup center Elise Oberdick added 12 points.
“I was pleased with the way we ran our offense tonight,” Schulz said. “We have not seen much zone this year and we ran our zone offense really well tonight, our high-low. We made good passes tonight. I was not pleased with our defense at all tonight. I know we only gave them so many points but we didn’t rebound well, we lost the ball out of our hands, things that, at this level, we’ve got to do a much better job with. I don’t know if you’ve seen North Catholic and some of these teams, but they’re very good. These are teams that could win the Triple and Quad-A, so we’ve got to do a better job than we did tonight.”
Avonworth jumped out to an 11-point lead by the 2:00 mark of the first quarter, and stretched the lead to 21 at 5:41 of the second. The lead reached 31 with 2:10 left in the second quarter, and the mercy clock – marking a 40-point lead in the second half – began to run when the lead reached 41 with 3:20 left in the third quarter.
The clock was stopped only for free throws and timeouts through the remainder of the contest. Officials Jim Settembrino, Bruce Lydic and Anne Buss executed the game in less than 60 minutes.
Center Maddie Snyder led J-M with nine points.
“I’m really proud of our girls,” said Kraft. “They did a great job this year. That’s quite an accomplishment, to go to the playoffs two years in a row after not going at all for 22 years. I’m really proud of them.”