South Fayette pulled off what some saw as a minor miracle to beat loaded Chartiers Valley to win its first WPIAL Class 5A girls basketball title in 2022.
Last season the Lions did the expected when they went into the tournament as the top seed with a pair of Division I recruits in Ava Leroux and Maddie Webber to go back-to-back.
But this was supposed to be the year South Fayette finally fell off the perch. The Lions didn’t have a Division I recruit, finished third in their section and were the No. 6 seed heading into the playoffs.
“I knew it was going to take time to get to kind of get to where we were because of our youth,” South Fayette coach Bryan Bennett said. “I knew we had talent. It was just learning how to play hard for 32 minutes, learning how to do little details and, once we learned how to do that, it just kind of clicked.”
That’s why, when it was all said and done, not even one of the greatest individual efforts in title game history was enough to keep South Fayette from holding the championship trophy aloft one more time.
A pair of sophomores Juliette Leroux and Haylie Lamonde led the way as Ava’s little sister put up a team-high 18 points and Lamonde 17 to lead sixth-seeded South Fayette (18-8) to its third consecutive championship with a 70-63 victory against No. 5 first time finalist Armstrong (21-5) on Saturday at Petersen Events Center.
“It’s crazy. I can’t even explain it. It’s so much joy,” South Fayette senior guard Lainey Yater said. “This team is everything I could ever imagine. It’s so sad that I’m going to have to leave it soon.”
South Fayette, which got through No. 3 Trinity which it had lost to twice in the regular season and No. 2 McKeesport just to get to the final, won it all again despite a herculean effort from Armstrong senior guard Emma Paul, who nearly willed the River Hawks to victory. The Fairmont State softball recruit hit six 3-pointers, the third-most in WPIAL championship game history, as part of a game-high 36 points that is the most ever scored in either a Class 5A or Class 6A final since the two classifications were added in 2017.
“I just knew we were down and I was trying to keep us together and made some long shots at the end,” Paul said. “I came up short, but you’ve got to leave it all out there.”
Armstrong trailed 35-25 at halftime and Paul had 12 points prior to the intermission. But once South Fayette extended its lead to 11, 40-29, on a Leroux three-point play with 6:32 remaining in the third quarter, Paul got to work. Sahe scored 10 points in the period, including an off-balance prayer of a 3-pointer that somehow found the bottom of the net with 2.1 seconds left to cut the deficit to 47-43.
“Emma did a marvelous job,” Armstrong coach Jim Callipare said. “She’s getting double-teamed and knocked around and down as she has every game, but she really is a catalyst for our team and she leads us.”
Paul was everywhere in the fourth quarter and had 14 points down the stretch, but every time she got the River Hawks within spitting distance, the Lions countered like the champions they are.
Armstrong got it back to a one-possession game a couple of times in the final period, once on a pair of Kyla Fitzgerald free throws – she had 12 of her 16 in the second half – 1:02 into the frame and then on a 3-pointer from Paul with 4:28 left to get it back to 53-50. Just 10 seconds later, Leroux drilled a 3-pointer to counter and put South Fayette back up six.
Paul, in fact, scored 14 of the River Hawks final 16 points in the game. But at the end of the day, the South Fayette inside game, with 17 from Erica Hall and a 31-23 rebounding edge was just too much for one player to overcome.
“I think it honestly just took us coming together as a team,” Hall said. “Once playoffs hit, we were like win or go home. This is real right now.”
So is the championship trophy they’re taking home for the third straight time.
Keith Barnes: kbarnes.pg@gmail.com and @kbarnes_pghsprt on X
First Published: March 3, 2024, 12:42 a.m.
