Feb 23, 2019 4 min read

WEXFORD – When you face a No. 1 seed in the playoffs, everything has to go right for you.

A bad shooting day could prove costly for your upset bid.

Ringgold couldn’t find its offensive touch in the opening eight minutes and was playing catchup the rest of the way as it fell to top-seeded New Castle, 64-52, Saturday afternoon in the Class 4A boys basketball quarterfinals at North Allegheny High School.

“We were not intimidated by them, but we just had a poor shooting performance,” Ringgold coach Phil Pergola said. “Especially in that first quarter. Nothing would fall for us. We were down by 17 points at one point, but we never quit and made a game of it. We made it close at the end, but turnovers and some missed opportunities went against us.”

Despite a slow start, the Rams (14-9) did get their offense going the rest of the way and went toe-to-toe with the two-time defending WPIAL champions. Ringgold only made two three-pointers and shot 8-for-16 at free-throw line.

Luke Wyvratt and Jaden Taylor scored 14 points each for the Rams, while Chris Peccon tallied 13. Ringgold can still make the PIAA playoffs, if New Castle wins the WPIAL title.

Drew Cox garnered 13 of his game-high 21 points in the final quarter for the Hurricanes (19-4). Sheldon Cox and Michael Wells added 15 points each for New Castle, which will play Highlands, a 69-61 winner over Uniontown, in the semifinals Tuesday.

New Castle has won its last nine quarterfinal matchups and their last defeat in the round of eight was to Moon in 2009. The Red Hurricanes have won five WPIAL titles over the last seven years.

“They shot the ball very well,” Pergola said. “If I was going to put the blame on anything for us, it was our shooting. New Castle is hard to defend and they have a lot of length. We thought they had a lot of slashers, but a lot of their kids shot the three-ball pretty good. We threw a zone at them, but then they started to make threes from the corners.”

Trailing 7-2 in the early stages of the first quarter, Wyvratt grabbed back-to-back inside hoops for the Rams and made the deficit to 7-6 before New Castle collected 10 straight points. Ringgold was down 17-8 going into the second quarter.

After the teams exchanged points to start the second quarter, the Hurricanes scored five unanswered points to extend their lead to 29-15 with 3:36 left in the first half.

Ringgold responded with a 6-0 run to close out the second and trailed 29-21 at halftime.

“We were able to rebound from a bad first quarter,” Pergola said. “Nobody expected us to be here and I think we were looser as the game unfolded. It’s tough to make a run on them because they have a lot of quality shooters and get their offense from a lot of different people.”

New Castle stretched its lead to 40-23 after starting the third period with an 11-2 spree. Ringgold answered with 10 straight points, but the top seed scored the final four points of the quarter and was up 44-33 heading into the fourth.

The Hurricanes started the final quarter with a 13-7 spurt to maintain its lead. Drew Cox had three treys in the run for New Castle.

After Peccon compiled the next five points for Ringgold, New Castle was able to close out the contest and did all their scoring from the foul line, making 7 of 10.

“We will see what happens in the next week,” Pergola said. “I really like this team and we came back from being 3-19 last year. It’s been a great season. We have a lot of kids coming back next year. I think we played our best down the stretch. The first round win was our best game of the season. Take away the shooting, we played a pretty good game today.”