Peters Township holds off Hempfield
Peters Township's Lillian Young, center, gets tangled up with Hempfield's Olivia Persin while Isabella Mills reacts to the action.
Olivia Ziegler breezes past Allison Podkul during Peters Township's WPIAL Class 6A girls basketball playoff game against Hempfield.
BALDWIN – Basketball is a game of averages for Peters Township girls basketball coach Bert Kendall.
Even when the Indians play a below-average first half, there isn’t panic when Kendall enters the locker room.
“If we don’t shoot well in the first, then we’ll do better in the second,” he said. “It all will work out.”
The shots fell for second-seeded Peters Township when they needed to the most in Friday night’s WPIAL Class 6A quarterfinal game at Baldwin High School.
The Indians held off two late rallies from seventh-seeded Hempfield, one at the end of the third quarter and the other late in the fourth, to defeat the Spartans, 48-40.
Peters Township (20-3) will make its first semifinal appearance since 2010 when it plays section rival Bethel Park Tuesday at a site and time to be determined.
The averages Kendall speaks of worked out in Peters Township’s favor when the Spartans cut the PT lead to two points, 31-29, on an Allison Podkul layup to open the fourth quarter.
Not making a three-pointer, despite numerous attempts to do so through the first three quarters, the Indians made three in 58 seconds to stretch the lead back to double digits, 40-29.
Trailing from the start, Hempfield (12-12) would not go quietly.
Podkul, who scored a game-high 23 points, sparked a 11-2 run with three layups and a free throw to narrow the deficit again to two points, 42-40, with 2:26 remaining.
“Our kids battled,” said Hempfield coach Lindsy Muchnock. “They never gave up once. They continued to fight. We just couldn’t get over the hump.”
The main reason the Spartans couldn’t surpass Peters Township was the play of Makenna Marisa, who picked up a hand-check foul midway through the second quarter to put her on the bench until halftime.
Marisa scored on a layup and a jump hook in the final minute and a half to give the Indians a comfortable lead that wouldn’t be threatened. She scored 16 points of her team-high 20 points in the second half.
“She made some unbelievable shots in the second half,” Muchnock said of Marisa. “That’s why she is getting looks from Division I schools. We would score and then couldn’t get the stops needed at crucial times. We would cut it to two or four (points), then they would get a score. That’s why they are the No. 2 seed. They are a great team.”
What Kendall was most worried about, a lull to open the game after not playing in nearly two weeks, subsided when the Indians jumped in front 8-2 in the first five minutes.
“We talked about the first four minutes being important, and I thought we were fine,” Kendall said. “Some of our plays to get the three-point shot worked, but we weren’t hitting them. We shot a pretty poor percentage in the first half, which made it closer than it needed to be.”
Both teams struggle dto score in the first half, which ended with Peters Township leading 17-13. The offenses awoke in the final two quarters.
Isabella Mills and Lillian Young scored 13 and 11 points, respectively, for Peters Township.
Hempfield’s Sarah Liberatore had 11 points.
“We, as coaches, show confidence in our players,” Kendall said. “We didn’t change anything. We were going to run what will work. If we execute, (shots) will fall. In the end, you have to execute when the game is on the line. We did that.”