Gehlmann, Knetzer spark Waynesburg over W&J
The Waynesburg womens’ basketball team celebrates their 69-64 win over W&J Wednesday.
Waynesburg head coach Sam Jones reacts to a call by an official in the final minute of Wednesday night’s game against W&J.
W&J’s Danni Medovich and Waynesburg’s Kassidy O’Keefe struggle for possession of the ball during Wednesday’s PAC game at Henry Memorial Center.
Waynesburg’s Mackenna Drazich breaks through W&J’s defense to score two during the first half of Wednesday night’s game.
The W&J and Waynesburg women’s basketball teams have become accustomed to playing close, hard-fought games when they meet on the court.
And Wednesday night was no exception.
In a game that featured eight ties and eight lead changes in the second half, Waynesburg fought its way to a 69-64 road win in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, sending W&J to its third consecutive loss.
Waynesburg’s Addy Knetzer converted a layup to put the Yellow Jackets on top 65-64 with 30 seconds remaining.
A pair of Monica Starre free throws extended the lead to 67-64, with the Presidents having a shot to tie the score. Waynesburg’s Katie Gehlmann, who made five three-point field goals, made a play at the defensive end as well, blocking Danielle Parker’s three-point attempt with seven seconds remaining to seal the win for the Yellow Jackets (6-3, 10-6).
“It was a huge win,” Waynesburg head coach Sam Jones said. “Typical Waynesburg and W&J game. One team gets up and the other comes back and it comes down to the final couple of minutes. Sometimes I wonder why we even play the first 38 minutes.”
The Presidents trailed 50-44 after three quarters, but scored the first seven points of the fourth to take a 51-50 advantage.
Amirah Moore made a layup and Taylor Cortazzo followed with the next five points. Moore and Cortazzo each scored 18 points to lead W&J (6-3, 9-7), which dropped into a second-place tie with Waynesburg in the PAC standings.
The W&J lead was short-lived as Haley Delaney, who finished with 15 points, knocked down consecutive three-point shots to put Waynesburg back up, 56-51.
The game went back and forth the rest of the way.
A Cortazzo layup with 1:08 remaining helped erase a five-point Waynesburg lead, but the Yellow Jackets answered at the other end of the court when Knetzer made the go-ahead layup.
“We missed a lot of shots,” W&J head coach Jina DeRubbo said.
Both teams shot only 37 percent on the night.
“We’ve been missing layups all season,” DeRubbo said. “They outworked us tonight.”
Most of that work was done on the glass as the Yellow Jackets outrebounded W&J 45-32, including an 18-9 edge on the offensive boards.
Knetzer, who scored 18 points, finished with a double-double, grabbing 12 rebounds.
“I pride myself on rebounding,” said Knetzer, a Chartiers-Houston graduate. “I knew there were rebounds to be had. I just had to work hard to get them. Sometimes if my shot isn’t falling I can make a big impact on the boards. You win games by rebounding and we did that.”
Gehlmann set the tone for the Yellow Jackets from the opening tip.
The Yellow Jackets scored the game’s first eight points and opened on a 13-4 run behind a trio of three-point shots from Gehlmann.
It was a game of runs as the Presidents scored the next seven points. Wash High graduate Mya Gordon put the cap on a 13-3 W&J run with a layup that gave the Presidents a 17-16 lead.
The Yellow Jackets led 18-17 after one quarter and the game remained tight as neither team led by more than three points for the first eight minutes of the second quarter, until Gehlmann heated up from the perimeter. The senior made back-to-back threes to spark a 10-3 Waynesburg run as the Yellow Jackets went up 35-27.
Gehlmann knocked down 5 of 8 three-point attempts in the first half when she scored 17 of her game-high 19 points.
“Katie gave us a big lift early,” Jones said. “When we get the outside game going it is so important for us. It makes it hard for teams to key on our inside game when we are shooting well from the outside. Katie played great.”
The third quarter belonged to Knetzer, who scored 10 of Waynesburg’s 13 points, including a three-point shot at the buzzer to extend the Yellow Jackets’ lead to 50-44.
“The inside and outside game worked in unison,” Jones said. “We did a great job of kicking it out when we needed to and we took advantage of the opportunities we had to dump the ball down low to Addy.”