Mar 11, 2015 4 min read

ALTOONA – McGuffey’s athletic programs might want to avoid Altoona High School for the forseeable future.

After losing on a buzzer-beating shot in the PIAA playoffs last season at Altoona, the Highlanders had to make a return trip to the school’s gymnasium.

After Wednesday night, the building could be labeled, “The House of Horrors.”

McGuffey saw an eight-point lead in the third quarter slip away and West Perry junior forward Meredith Brown made a game-winning layup with nine seconds remaining to defeat the Highlanders, 52-51, Wednesday night in the second round of the PIAA Class AAA playoffs.

West Perry (25-3) advanced to the quarterfinals where it will face Berks Catholic Saturday at a site and time to be determined.

The Highlanders (20-9) led 51-50 with less than 30 seconds remaining when Mustangs senior guard Madi Urich caught an inbounds pass. After watching the clock wind down to 15 seconds, Urich quickly passed to Katie Lavenberg, who drove to the basket before bouncing a pass to Brown down low.

Brown, who had just one point in the first half, quickly made the layup with nine seconds remaining. The Highlanders missed two opportunities below the basket before the buzzer sounded to end their state playoff run.

“We had picked up the pressure defensively and it was working,” McGuffey head coach Amanda Burchett said. “It was just a missed assignment. Somebody didn’t rotate, somebody didn’t do their job on defense and it happened several times throughout the game. We had a terrible defensive game.”

Despite making just 2 of 14 shots from the field in the first quarter, McGuffey took a five-point lead into the half. Lavenberg drove to the basket with 10 seconds remaining in the second quarter and the official blew the whistle to signify a foul.

The shot went in, but instead of a possible three-point play to give West Perry a one-point lead at halftime, Lavenberg was called for a charge and the basket did not count. The Highlanders answered with a buzzer-beating three-pointer by senior Sammie Weiss, who scored a game-high 22 points. Weiss, a California University recruit, finished her career with 2,390 points.

McGuffey forced eight first-half turnovers and capitalized in transition. After Mustangs head coach Scott Moyer railed against giveaways at halftime, his team had just four turnovers the rest of the game.

“We wanted to get them into a half-court game and make them work for some shots. That was the big talk there,” Moyer said. “Our turnovers were turning into two points the other way and they are so good up top. We wanted to clean that up.”

McGuffey senior guard Rachel Czulewicz, who finished with 16 points, made a baseline three-pointer less than a minute into the third quarter to give the Highlanders an eight-point lead. Instead of slowing the pace of the game, McGuffey attempted to speed it up.

Behind Urich, who scored 18 of her team-high 20 points in the second half, the Mustangs finished the third quarter on a 19-4 run to take a 37-36 lead.

“The whole game from the start wasn’t our rhythm,” Burchett said. “We had missed opportunities. We didn’t convert on them. We kept the tempo up, but we didn’t convert. That threw us out of our game, which made us scramble. We shot when we shouldn’t have. We passed when we shouldn’t have.”

McGuffey increased its lead to five points on two foul shots by Katie Demi with 2:37 remaining, but Lavenberg hit a three-pointer and Urich made a free throw to draw West Perry to within one point.

The Highlanders missed two shots on the next possession and their turnover gave the Mustangs the ball with 30 seconds remaining. Brown capitalized.

“We wanted to shoot the ball with enough time to get an offensive rebound,” Moyer said. “We wanted to get it to one of the two post people inside. It took a little longer to develop and then on the first ball rotation, Katie penetrated and got it there.”

Despite the disappointing loss, Burchett was pleased to see her team defy the odds in its first season back in Class AAA.

“Up until this point, we had done extremely well,” Burchett said. “We exceeded all expectations, we got further than we did last year and with the competition level we played at, I think we did a great job.”