Feb 23, 2018 4 min read

McMURRAY – Despite winning 18 games, one of the knocks on the Chartiers-Houston boys basketball team has been its inability to put four good quarters together.

The Bucs picked a good time to play their most complete game of the season.

The fifth-seeded Bucs opened the game on fire from the floor and played solid defense throughout as Chartiers-Houston knocked off fourth-seeded Serra Catholic 53-44 Friday night in the WPIAL Class 2A quarterfinals at Peters Township High School.

“We’re going to enjoy this one tonight,” said Chartiers-Houston head coach Eugene Briggs. “We put it together. I’m proud of our effort.”

The win advances the Bucs to the semifinals Tuesday when they will take on top-seeded Sewickley Academy. The win also secures the Bucs a spot in the PIAA tournament.

“This is a huge accomplishment for us,” said senior Cam Hanley. “We’ve been playing together since fourth grade. We’ve never made it to the semifinals before and it’s nice to win our way into states instead of needing help.”

Chartiers-Houston (19-5) didn’t have to worry about playing from behind and having to come back in this one as it made its first six shots from the floor in building a 17-6 lead after one quarter.

Zach Southern was especially big early, making three shots from three-point range.

Southern finished with 14 points.

“I felt good tonight,” said Southern. “We put a lot of practice in and I felt good at shootaround. I just had confidence and shot my shot. This is a big win for us.”

Meanwhile, the C-H zone defense forced Serra Catholic (18-5) into a jump shooting team and it didn’t make many. Serra made just 2 of 13 shots from in the first quarter and shot just 24 percent in the first half.

“We tried to guard from the foul line down and sideline to sideline,” Briggs said. “We were all over the place. Defense does it all for us. They have a lot of weapons and we did a good job of recognizing them.”

Southern got the second quarter started with a three-point shot, his fourth of the half, as the Bucs made six of 10 attempts from behind the arc in the first 16 minutes.

When the Bucs weren’t making jump shots, Cam Hanley was having success driving to the basket. Hanley scored 12 of his 21 points in the first half.

“I was proud of our effort tonight.” Hanley said. “We dug deep for this one.”

The Eagles also struggled from the free-throw line, making just 3 of 13 first-half attempts.

“You can’t shoot that poorly from the line and expect to win,” Serra Catholic head coach Justin Walther said.

C-H extended the lead to 16 after three quarters as point guard Andrew Clark scored six of the Bucs’ eight points in the quarter to give Chartiers-Houston a 39-23 lead.

Things got dicey in the fourth quarter as Serra Catholic made a run. The Eagles pressured the Bucs into turnovers and Khalil Smith made C-H pay. Smith knocked down four three-pointers in the quarter as the Eagles outscored Chartiers-Houston 21-14.

Smith’s final three got the Eagles as close as five, but the Bucs did a good job from the free-throw line to win the game.

Smith led all scorers with 22 points. Jimmy Moon had 10 points.

“When you play like you practice this is what happens,” Walther said. “All we did was joke around all week. It’s like we thought we were just going to come into here and walk out with a win. They put it on us early and it took three quarters to get rid of that deer-in-the-headlights look. We started to get active in the fourth and started making shots, but it was too late by then.”