For the Peters Township girls, this season has been absolutely perfect. Twenty-seven games and 27 wins.
For Bethel Park, everything also would be perfect, if not for Peters Township. Twenty-six games and four losses.
All to Peters Township.
The fourth and final loss to Peters Township came Tuesday night in a PIAA Class 6A second-round game at Canon-McMillan. Peters Township had four players in double figures and rolled to a 62-44 victory.
Bethel Park is obviously a good team, but just not good enough to knock off Peters Township. The 18-point margin was the largest in the four games the teams played. In the first meeting in early January, Peters Township needed overtime before winning. This time, Peters Township led by 15 points at halftime. Besides two losses in the regular season, Bethel Park lost to Peters Township in the WPIAL semifinals.
“It’s tough to deal with as a coach because you try some different things each time and try to tweak some things. But it just never clicked all the way,” said Bethel Park coach Jonna Burke, whose team lost three of four games to Peters Township last season. “Honestly, out of the four games we played them this year, this was clearly the best we’ve seen them. They were really clicking.”
Peters Township clicked its way to a place the Indians haven’t been in 25 years. Peters Township moved on to the PIAA quarterfinals for the first time since 1994.
Both Burke and Peters Township coach Bert Kendall often used the word efficient when describing the way Peters Township played against Bethel Park this time. Standout senior point guard had Makenna Marisa had 18 points, making 8 of 12 shots. Mackenzie Lehman, a 5-foot-11 junior forward, had 14 points and 10 rebounds, and Journey Thompson, a 6-1 freshman, had 13 points and 10 rebounds. Sophomore guard Jordan Bisignani had 10 points, including two 3-pointers.
“We played well,” Kendall said. “We made some slight changes, one being a 2-2-1 press that I think threw them off a little bit. … We were pretty efficient, with the exception of the first three or four minutes of the first quarter.”
Peters Township shot 46 percent (25 of 54) and 52 percent (12 of 23) in the first half. Bethel Park had a horrible time shooting in the first three quarters, making only 17 percent (7 of 41) and 13 percent (2 of 15) from 3-point range. Bethel Park made six 3-pointers in the final quarter, but it was too little, too late. Senior point guard Maria Cerro led the Black Hawks with 18 points.
At one point between the second and third quarters, Bethel Park went more than five-and-a-half minutes without a field goal. During that time, Peters Township widened its lead from six to 18 points.
“I give them a lot of credit,” said Burke. “They’re long and they’re so efficient with that height. They clean up everything on the offensive glass, and then if you try doubling Makenna, she finds the open player.”
Mike White: mwhite@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mwhiteburgh.
First Published: March 13, 2019, 1:48 a.m.