Southmoreland tried a new approach in the first half of its matchup with Quaker Valley in the WPIAL Class 4A semifinals.
It didn’t work.
And it probably cost the Scotties a return trip to the championship game.
Quaker Valley senior Bailee Garbee scored a game-high 23 points, including the 1,000th of her career and Corrinne Washington made sure it stood up with 22 of her own and nine rebounds as the No. 2 seeded Quakers (15-4) dominated the first half, then held on for a 60-50 victory over Southmoreland (16-5).
“It was a good team effort, early on, sharing the ball, different people making shots and not just them two and that’s just the story of our season,” Quaker Valley Tom Demko coach said. “It hasn’t been just those two, we’re getting a lot of points and a lot of contributions … but no doubt, we needed them to step up and have a big game in a big situation and they did.”
Quaker Valley will play Section 2 rival Beaver in the WPIAL Class 4A championship game at 5 p.m. Friday at Peters Township. It will be the Quakers first appearance in a title game.
“It’s been cool and really fun to grow alongside everyone,” Garbee said. “It’s been great these four years to kind of start from the bottom ninth-grade year when we didn’t make the playoffs to now when we’re making history at Quaker Valley.”
Garbee was crucial to the Quaker Valley attack in the first half as he scored 12 points to keep Southmoreland at bay. She also knew she was pursuing her 1,000th point and got it on a two-pointer 1:03 into the second quarter.
At least she did until right before the game
“I actually forgot about it before the game and, even when I scored the sixth, I forgot about it, so when they announced it, it was the first time I remembered,” Garbee said. “It was a cool moment. Everyone was clapping and they announced it. It was just really nice.”
Southmoreland would have been out of the game early were it not for Gracie Spadaro, who scored 11 of the team’s 13 first-quarter points and had 15 of its 20 at the intermission. The junior forward finished with 21 as the Scotties struggled throughout the first half trying to match up with Washington and Garbee.
“I take that on me, and we tried match up a little bit more size-wise because they have a bigger lineup and we tried [to do something] a little bit different after watching them on film,” Southmoreland coach Amber Cernuto said.” I went back and forth, do we stick with our same game plan or do we fall back, but the girls got through it.”
Other 4A game
If there’s one thing Beaver (19-0) does better than anyone, it’s clamp down on defense.
And that’s exactly what the Bobcats did against a Knoch (10-2) squad than came in averaging nearly 55 points per game.
Emma Pavelek scored as many points as the entire Knights team as she went for a game-high 22, and top-seeded Beaver rolled into the WPIAL finals for the third time in four years with a 40-22 victory over No. 4 Knoch.
Beaver has limited 11 of its 19 opponents to fewer than 25 points.
“We played great defense all night and we challenged all those 3s they took,” Beaver coach Greg Huston said. “But the big thing was that we limited their second chances and we had 37 rebounds. And then, offensively, Emma just kind of stepped up and put us on her shoulders.”
First Published: March 10, 2021, 4:21 a.m.
