CENTRE COUNTY — St. Joseph’s Catholic Academy girls’ basketball team secured the third seed from District 6 in the PIAA 1A tournament with a win over Williamsburg in the D6 seeding game, while State College missed out on a tournament berth after a 51-35 loss to Altoona in the D6 championship game.
In 3A, Penns Valley will also miss the tournament after a D6 consolation game loss to Marion Center by a score of 50-43.
St. Joseph’s will now move on to the PIAA Tournament’s first round on Saturday, March 7.
SJCA 75, Williamsburg 73
Both St. Joe’s and Williamsburg girls’ basketball teams had already made it to the PIAA tournament when they squared off for their seeding game on Feb. 26 at Bald Eagle Area High School.
But that didn’t mean that the intensity between these two would be any less.
Along with Bishop Guilfoyle and Bishop Carroll, the WolfPack and the Lady Pirates have dominated the D6 1A bracket, and it’s always an event when any of these four teams meet.
And it was on Thursday at BEA.
Two weeks ago, SJCA handled Williamsburg at home by almost 30 points, and the Pirates were psyched to atone for that bad effort, no matter that the game was not for a championship.
From the start the game was a tight struggle where neither team was able to gain any kind of comfortable advantage.
The score was 36-34 in favor of the Pirates at halftime, and then it was tied at 55-55 heading into the final eight minutes.
Down the stretch, two 3-pointers by all-star guard Naomi Crispin and eight points by Jacee Cunningham kept the WolfPack on pace.
But it was Cunningham who stole the show.
In the final seconds of regulation, with the score tied at 73, she grabbed an offensive rebound of her own shot and put it back for what was the winning basket with just .7 seconds left to play.
“With about 14 seconds left we called a time out,” SJCA head coach Bethany Irwin said, “and then we ran a play. Jacee got the shot, but it kissed off and she fought for the rebound and with about .7 seconds left she put it back to win the game.
“We had to make big adjustments to their defense all night, and the win was a total team effort.”
Cunningham finished the game for SJCA with 15 points, just behind Crispin who scored 20. Alexia Luckovich and Aubrey Yartz were also in double figures with 12 and 11 points.
The WolfPack survived by nailing a total of 11 3-pointers on the night and going 10-for-11 from the line.
Now at 24-3 and the No. 3 seed from District 6, St. Joseph’s will take on the District 7 runner-up Geibel Catholic in Connellsville on Saturday, March 7 at 1 p.m.
Geibel Catholic is 23-2 for the season and the Gators came in second in the WPIAL Championship by winning two games by a total of four points and then losing in the title game by one point to Serra Catholic.
First it was St. Joseph, a 55-53 win, and then came a 52-50 win over Aquinas Academy in the semifinals.
They lost the title game 47-46 to Serra after leading by a point heading into the fourth quarter.
Geibel is led by two prolific scorers.
Senior point guard Emma Larkin leads the team with an average of 24.5 points per game, and sophomore Mallory Clemmer is close behind with an average of 22.2 points per game.
Larkin also leads with 9 assists per game and 6 rebounds.
Geibel’s only other loss also came against Serra Catholic also by one point, 51-50.
The winner of the first round game will take on either 9-1 Clarion Limestone (19-7) or 7-6 St. Joseph (14-11) on March 11 in the second round.
Other Scores:
D6-6A final
Altoona 51, State College 35
D6-3A consolation
Marion Center 50, Penns Valley 43
