Eerily similar road could lead C-H to back-to-back WPIAL titles
Repeat isn’t a word that has been brought up during practices, games or team functions for the Chartiers-Houston girls basketball team.
Even this late in the season, with the third-seeded Bucs set to begin their playoff run against Leechburg at 6:30 p.m. tonight at West Allegheny High School, three wins away from winning back-to-back WPIAL Class AA championships is still a game-by-game process.
“We haven’t talked about a repeat,” said C-H head coach Laura Montecalvo. “We are just taking it one day at a time, one team at a time. Any given night if you don’t play your “A” game, then it’s over.”
After a dominating 47-35 victory over Vincentian Academy in 2017, the Bucs became only the third Washington County school, and first in 25 years, to win a WPIAL girls basketball title.
But another championship wouldn’t just be a repeat.
If Chartiers-Houston were to proudly raise a first-place plaque in the Peterson Events Center again, it will likely have to go through the exact same teams: Leechburg, Our Lady of Sacred Heart and Vincentian.
And that’s not all.
If the Bucs play those teams, which is likely as they are the top seeds, C-H will have defeat those teams in the exact same order as they did one year ago.
“The contenders are a lot the same,” Montecalvo joked. “Experience in big situations will help us. The biggest thing I feel is that we know what kind of effort it takes to win those games. It’s four quarters of all-out basketball. If you have a lull or a bad spurt, it can kill you.”
Familiar opponents only begin the comparisons from this year’s Chartiers-Houston team and the title-winning group from a year ago.
The roster is nearly identical with the exception of Jala Walker, the second-leading scorer and point guard for the Bucs last season.
What else hasn’t changed is the mentality they have on defense, a mindset Montecalvo credited to their long playoff run.
In Chartiers-Houston’s last five regular-season games, it hasn’t surrendered 30 points once. Opponents in those games only averaged 21.2 points per game.
“Defense is going to be the most important thing for us,” Montecavlo said, as the Bucs allowed just 21.4 points per game in their final six games of last year’s regular season. Leechburg was the only team in the WPIAL playoffs to score more than 40 points.
It will be a battle between two 2,000-point scorers with C-H’s Alexa Williamson and the Blue Devils’ Mikayla Lovelace, who committed to play at IUP in November. Both reached the milestone during section play this year.
“Defense is going to be paramount. Leechburg is a fantastic basketball team,” Montecalvo said.
Finding secondary scoring to assist Williamson, a Temple commit averaging around 30 points per game, was atop the priorities coming into November for the Bucs. They’ve found scoring elsewhere, especially as the season has progressed, but Montecalvo admits it’s a guessing game as to who will have a hot hand.
“Last year, (Leechburg) kind of left us out on the perimeter and dared us to shoot the ball,” she remembers. “We talked about our other kids getting involved in the offense and forcing them to respect our perimeter shooters. We have kids that can shoot, but everybody needs to be an offensive threat. We preached it last year, but it’s even more important this year.”
As for a repeat, it’s all hands on deck for the Bucs.
“It would be amazing to have that chance again,” Montecalvo said. “I’m sure some revenge exists for those opponents. Our focus is that this is a new year, a different team, different games and trying to concentrate on what it takes for us to be successful.”