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Beaver Falls' depth overwhelms Shenango, 78-61

Beaver Falls' depth overwhelms Shenango, 78-61

Tigers move on to semifinals
Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette
Bishop Canevin's Kevin Smith, left, defends Jeannettes Greg Parker yesterday at Gateway High School. Canevin pulled the mild upset with a 56-44 win against the No. 3-seeded Jayhawks in Class AA.
Click photo for larger image.

Beaver Falls' Lance Jeter and Shenango's Steve McNees made history yesterday. For only the second time in a WPIAL basketball game, two 2,000-point scorers squared off.

So naturally, with more than 4,000 points on the court between two players, the game came down to scoring -- from everyone else.

Jeter got a lot of help from his friends and Beaver Falls knocked off Shenango, 78-61, in a WPIAL Class AA quarterfinal at Ambridge.

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The win puts the defending champion Tigers (23-3) into the semifinals for the fifth year in a row. They will play Tuesday or Wednesday against Bishop Canevin, which defeated Jeannette, 56-44, in another quarterfinal yesterday.

The only other time two 2,000-point scorers played in a WPIAL game was 1994 when Duquesne's Kevin Price and Shaler Area's Dan Fortson met.

Jeter, a senior guard, scored 16 points yesterday, but that was only good for third-best on his team. Senior guard Jack Anderson led with 19 and freshman forward Todd Thomas added 18. Senior guard Dom Henderson also played a key role, scoring 12.

"If this was Wimbledon tennis, it would all be Lance and Steve," Beaver Falls coach Doug Biega said. "But this is a team game and our team beat their team."

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McNees, a senior guard headed for Duquesne University, scored 21 points, while junior guard Luke O'Hara had a team-high 23. But the rest of the Wildcats had only 17.

"Beaver Falls just has so much depth and I do think that was a factor, especially as the game wore on," said Bill McNees, Shenango's coach and Steve's father. "They have more athletes and better athletes and they just kept running them at us. I thought we got a little tired."

Steve McNees, who averages 28 points per game, played on an injured left ankle. The ankle was injured on the final night of the regular season and McNees missed a week of practice before the Wildcats' first playoff game Wednesday.

McNees, guarded most of the game by Thomas, was only 7 of 21 from the field, including 2 of 14 from 3-point range. For the season, he had been shooting a little better than 40 percent from 3-point range.

"I had a hard time going right, so that's almost like taking away half of my options," McNees said. "But my shots just weren't falling and you're going to have days like that."

Shenango (20-6) trailed, 30-25, at halftime. A key part of the game came with a little more than three minutes left. Thomas brought the crowd to its feet with a double-pumping, two-handed dunk that gave Beaver Falls a 61-51 lead. But Biega was slapped with a technical foul a few seconds later for protesting a foul call.

"You could say I lost my composure, but I don't think so," Biega said. "That was just my Italian heritage coming out, but it wasn't appreciated by everybody."

McNees made two free throws and then two more for the technical to make the score 61-55. Shenango's Kyle Monceaux missed a 3-pointer and Zach Anderson a shot from the inside. Fifteen seconds later, Jack Anderson scored on a three-point play to ignite an 11-0 run in 75 seconds that gave Beaver Falls a 72-55 lead with 1:37 left.

"If we score on that possession [after the technicals], I think we'd have had a buzzer game," Bill McNees said. "Then they made their run and that sort of burst our bubble."

First Published: February 26, 2006, 5:00 a.m.

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