Dec 12, 2023 3 min read

By Dave Whipkey

For the Observer-Reporter

newsroom@observer-reporter.com

McMURRAY – Now that the football season is over for Peters Township after the Indians’ run to the Class 5A PIAA title game last week, another squad in the district is gearing up for a run at a championship season as the boys basketball squad turned up the heat by hosting neighborhood rival Canon-McMillan Tuesday evening at AHN Arena.

The feisty Big Macs did not make things easy for last year’s WPIAL Class 5A finalist, but Peters Township eventually pulled away with a tough 69-60 win to lift their record to 3-2 overall while the Big Macs fell to 2-2 on the young season.

Peters Township’s Jack Dunbar led all scorers with 26 points and Dylan Donovan chipped in with 17.

Eamon O’Donoghue led Canon-McMillan with 15 points while Roman Koenemund and Evan Morris contributed with 14 and 12 points, respectively.

The Indians’ lineup was fortified by the additions of Mickey Vaccarello, Nick McCullough, Thomas Aspinall, and Nate Miller who all played key roles on the football squad.

“We had a 10-guy rotation tonight and to infuse the football guys in was big,” Peters Township coach Joe Urmann said. “We had a plan and tried to be flexible with it in terms of getting those guys in and getting the tempo up where we wanted it.”

The first quarter saw Peters Township pull ahead to an early 16-8 lead thanks to Donavan’s eight points in the frame. But Koenemund’s six points in the quarter pulled the Big Macs to within 20-16 as the quarter ended.

After a slow start, Dunbar got rolling in the second quarter when he tallied 16 of his 18 first-half points in the period as the Indians pushed their lead to 39-28 at the half.

“I know he hasn’t been really happy with how he’s been shooting the ball,” Urmann noted. “I know he’s been working really hard the past couple days. Some of that has been coming to fruition. Once he saw the ball go through a couple times, he could really score a lot of points quickly.”

The third quarter saw the Big Macs make a push and make things interesting as they clawed back to within 41-36 after back-to-back threes by Koenemund and Ryan Galicic. An O’Donoghue three along with a Blake Simmons two cut the Indians’ lead to 49-45 late in the third, but it would be as close as the visitors would get as the Indians pulled away in the fourth to seal the win.

Part of Peters Township’s closing push was Jaden Greco’s play off the bench. He scored five big fourth-quarter points and was strong defensively in the final frame.

“He’s worked extremely hard,” Urmann noted. “He won two of our awards for playing hard defensively and really smart tonight. We saw a smile out of Jaden afterwards which is always good to see.”

Canon-McMillan coach Charles Murphy said he was proud of his squad’s effort against such a seasoned outfit as Peters Township.

“They’ll probably be back again playing for the championship (in Class 5A),” he added. “We played hard and didn’t back off. Proud of how we responded tonight.”

Murphy added he was impressed with the play of O’Donoghue as he did battle with Dunbar much of the evening.

“He was strong all night long,” Murphy added.