GAME OF THE WEEK: Tough venues this week’s highlight
Thalia Juarez | Herald-Standard
California boys basketball coach Bruno Pappasergi speaks to his team during the Geibel Catholic Tip-Off Tournament on Dec. 9.
California’s Dru Miller (2) dribbles down the court against Mapletown during their game on Friday, Dec. 9 at Geibel Area Junior-Senior High School.
California coach Bruno Pappasergi instructs his team on the sideline during last season's game at Geibel Catholic. The Trojans visit Yough in non-section boys basketball Friday.
Where a game is played often has a more important role than against whom said game is played against. That’s doubly important in the non-section portion of most teams’ schedules, as teams get in some early-season jockeying for position in hopes that the WPIAL basketball committees are paying attention to who is beating whom and the whens and wheres of it all.
Two cases in point make up this week’s Herald-Standard Games of the Week basketball doubleheader. The Southmoreland girls (3-0) travel to Uniontown (0-3) at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and the California boys (2-1) visit Yough (0-3) at 7:30 p.m. Friday. California plays at Serra Catholic tonight and Yough played at Summitt Academy last night.
Of course, until section play begins next Monday and Tuesday, most teams are still trying to figure out how good they are and how good they can become by season’s end. To that end, many teams have scheduled non-section games on the road at notoriously tough venues.
That’s what led Southmoreland and senior phenom Olivia Porter to Uniontown’s A.J. Everhart Gymnasium and it is also what led California’s senior-laden Trojans to Yough to face the Class AAAA Cougars.
Lady Scotties coach Brian Pritts knows exactly what to expect when his team steps onto the Everhart floor and wouldn’t want anything else from Uniontown and coach Jason Winfrey.
“Jason does a nice job of getting his team ready to play,” Pritts said. “They will be aggressive, they will be physical and they will hustle. It’s always tough to play well in Uniontown’s gym, so this will be a good test for us.”
The same can be said for Yough’s gymnasium. Similar to Cougar Mountain, Yough’s football venue, just getting there is a challenge, let alone playing a game there. Yough is also a WPIAL playoff site.
But you don’t have to tell any of that to Cal coach Bruno Pappasergi.
“It’s a cause for concern to me, is what it is,” Pappasergi said. “We scrimmage Yough most years, so we know how hard it is to play up there.”
Pappasergi’s Trojans moved up from Class A to Class AA, so Pappasergi and the Trojan braintrust toughened up the Cal non-section schedule.
“We lost some games from last year’s schedule and we wanted to add some upper-level teams,” Pappasergi said. “You’ve never sure that it will have any affect on the WPIAL seedings or not, but we wanted to play tougher teams.”
The Trojans didn’t have a senior on last year’s WPIAL Class A playoff team, so it is safe to say that this year’s team is full of experience and confidence.
“We should be respectable,” Pappasergi said. “We have enough confidence and talent to play any style of basketball an opponent makes us play. We can run the floor effectively, but we can play a half-court game, as well.”
Yough, coached by Casey Copeman, is a Class AAAA school that made the Class AAA playoffs last season. “They are very young,” Pappasergi said. “But they have some talent.”
Talent, too, will be all over the court when Southmoreland visits Uniontown Wednesday night.
When Pritts said that Porter is “athletic,” he isn’t just spewing praise randomly. The 5-9 senior guard has verbally committed to Pitt-Greensburg to play softball.
“And she has been in contact with the women’s basketball coach there, too,” Pritts said. “She is a dynamic athlete. She was all-WPIAL in soccer, softball and basketball for a couple of years and kicked on the football team, too.
“She has had schools interested in her for basketball, even a few Division I schools have shown some interest, but most have been Division II or III schools.”
Southmoreland won its own girls tip-off tournament, while Uniontown was dropping a pair of games in the FCCA tip-off event. “I know Jason lost his top scorers from last year, but I also know he has a big girl who is a freshman,” Pritts said.
That, of course, would be 6-2 Mia Murray, who made the All-County volleyball team in the fall. Winfrey, though, finds himself in the beginning stages of a total rebuild of Uniontown’s team.
He lost 34 points per game from last year’s team. Khai Harris averaged 20, Arielle Winfrey scored 15 per game and Yolanda Jackson scored about 10 per game. Harris and Winfrey graduated, while Jackson died in a tragic accident since last season.
Winfrey still isn’t sure what he has in Murray.
“We’re still trying to figure her out,” he said. “And, she is still evolving as a player. We have to help her get better and that will help us get better as a team.”
The Lady Raiders seem to have good bloodlines on this team, but most of the girls are young. There is Murray, daughter of Phil Murray, Kierra McCargo, granddaughter of former Connellsville great Hawk McCargo, and Mylaysia Ellis, whose older brothers recently starred on the boys team at Uniontown.
“We are trying to find ourselves offensively,” Winfrey said. “It’s definitely more than this year, but it still has to be a process. We came in knowing what we have, but we have to get better on offense.”