South Fayette holds off Trinity for WPIAL title
South Fayette teammates celebrate after their win over Trinity. Mikayla Fetchet, left, and Autumn Mozick at Petersen Events Center Saturday.
South Fayette’s Sam Kosmacki drives past Trinity’s Sierra Kotchman and to the basket during the WPIAL Class AAA girls championship game Saturday at Petersen Events Center.
Trinitys Mary Dunn,15, fights back tears as she and her teammates wait for their medals after a loss to South Fayette in a WPIAL Class AAA championship game Saturday at Petersen Events Center.
Trinitys Abbey O’Connor (42) fights to maintain possession Saturday as her teammates cheer her on.
South Fayette’s Autumn Mozick drives on Trinity’s Natalie Cappelli during Saturday’s WPIAL Class AAA championship game at Petersen Event Center.
PITTSBURGH – As South Fayette’s girls basketball players warmed up Saturday afternoon for the WPIAL Class AAA championship game, some of the Lions’ players wore the silver medals they earned at the Petersen Events Center last year under their jerseys.
The weight of those silver medals while preparing for their shot at redemption was to serve as reminder that, no matter what, they weren’t going to leave Oakland without gold.
It took a late surge on offense and key defensive stops to hold off a relentless archrival, but they brought a new medal and trophy back to South Fayette.
Trinity overcame a 20-point second-quarter deficit and trailed by just two points with less than three minutes to go, but South Fayette senior center Emily Anderson scored nine fourth-quarter points to help the Lions hold on for a 59-52 win and the championship that eluded them one year ago.
Top-seeded South Fayette (22-3), which lost in the title game to Blackhawk last season, won the program’s first WPIAL championship.
“Mikayla (Fetchet) and I decided right at the beginning of the playoffs, we looked each other and said, ‘We’re going back and these are staying here, and we’re coming home with a different color one,'” South Fayette senior guard Autumn Mozick said. “It was a reminder to us that we had to come out of the gate, start hard and keep playing hard. You saw that today. I’m so proud of this group and it’s ridiculous how resilient we are.”
The Lions needed every bit of that resilience to stop the second-seeded Hillers (21-4), who fought back after trailing 35-15 late in the second quarter and by 13 points at halftime.
The deficit seemed like a distant memory when junior forward Abbey O’Connor’s jumper from the free-throw line had Trinity trailing 51-49 with less than three minutes left in the fourth quarter, but South Fayette head coach Matt Bacco’s adjustment proved to be a winning formula.
The Lions switched to a 3-2 zone to stop the Hillers’ outside shooting, and Anderson, who had a team-high 18 points, contested Trinity senior center Mary Dunn’s final shot. Anderson, who was limited in last season’s title game because of a knee injury, banked in a shot from the left block to stretch the Lions’ lead to six points.
Hillers sophomore guard Alayna Cappelli completed a three-point play on the next possession, but Anderson added a putback and Trinity’s final shot from the left baseline fell short. South Fayette junior guard Carlee Kilgus, who was playing for the first time since late December, grabbed the rebound, leading to Fetchet’s layup at the buzzer that sealed the win.
“I didn’t have any doubt we’d get back into the game, but I was hoping there would be enough time on the clock for us to finish it. Unfortunately, we ran out of time at the end,” Trinity head coach Bob Miles said. “We just couldn’t finish around the basket.”
The teams were scoreless through almost the first four minutes of the game, but both used dribble penetration to create open shots. Mozick’s three-pointer, followed by Sam Kosmacki’s layup, gave South Fayette a five-point lead after one quarter.
Though Trinity looked composed against South Fayette’s trapping zone defense, the Hillers started to settle for contested shots and the Lions couldn’t miss from the field, making five of their next six field-goal attempts, including a three-point play by Fetchet, to build the 20-point lead.
“We’re not the team we were playing like at first,” said Dunn, who finished with 13 points and 13 rebounds. “We knew we were better than that. We just put our heads together and picked it up. We knew we could come back, even though we didn’t finish.”
Dunn scored seven consecutive points to end the half. One adjustment created enough space for the comeback. Instead of waiting patiently outside the Lions’ zone, Trinity drove through it before passing to an open player.
It created space for Kotchman, who scored 13 of her 18 points in the second half. Dunn’s putback late in the third quarter cut the deficit to six points.
“We had to attack them more. There were several times in the first half where we were getting the corner, but we weren’t getting into the paint,” Miles said. “In the second half, Alayna and Sierra did a much better job doing that, which ultimately caused the zone to collapse and gave us the opportunity to get the ball inside.”
Cappelli and Kotchman both made three-pointers to start the fourth quarter, and O’Connor’s three-point play cut the deficit to one, but Mozick, who scored 13 points, had a steal and fast-break layup to shift momentum.
“They just show guts all year. That’s the best way I can describe them,” Bacco said. “They aren’t afraid to make plays in the clutch. They don’t play the scoreboard; they just keep playing, playing, playing. At the end of the game, we were able to drape gold medals around their necks.”