Three West Hills high school teams will end lengthy layoffs and begin what they hope will be equally lengthy journeys through the PIAA boys and girls basketball championships.
Two of the local teams will see action Friday night – both on the road – and the third will battle on its home court Saturday afternoon.
On Friday, Moon Area will head east to play Hershey High School at 6 p.m. in a Class 5A first-round boys matchup while Our Lady of the Sacred Heart will trek to Ebensburg to take on Central Cambria at 7 p.m. on the Red Devils’ home court in a Class 3A girls game.
On Saturday, OLSH will host Conemaugh Township in a Class 2A boys game at 3:30 p.m. at the Angela Activities Center.
A look at each of the first-round games follows:
Moon Area at Hershey
The Tigers, 20-5 overall and losers of two straight, have been idle since Feb. 26 when they lost 61-58 to Hampton in the WPIAL Tournament’s Class 5A third-place game. The layoff has given Moon coach Gino Palmosina plenty of time to review his team’s recent games as well as watch Hershey in action.
“They’re a really good team,” Palmosina said of the Trojans, who are led by 6-foot-3 senior guard Cameron Sweeney.
“It’s going to be a tough trip. We’ll be traveling the day of the game and we’ll be playing at (Hershey’s) home gym. The cards are definitely stacked against us, but it’s win or you’re done now.”
Palmosina said he watched a half-dozen of Hershey’s games and was impressed.
“They have a really good guard – everything funnels through him,” Palmosina said of Sweeney, who averages 25 points per game. “And they have some good players around him who are athletic and good shooters. They run a couple different things, but we’ll be prepared for anything they throw at us.”
Palmosina said the Tigers will enter Friday’s game with a bit of a chip on their shoulder after dropping a two-point decision to Chartiers Valley in the WPIAL semifinals and then falling by three to Hampton two nights later. He said his review of the Tigers’ recent outings leads him to believe that his team has been relying too much on the 3-point shot.
“I think we need to start getting the ball inside more,” he said. “In the past, we’ve shot it really well (from 3-point range) at times and had good results, but we can’t just keep our fingers crossed and hope we have a good shooting game from behind the arc.
“We need another recipe to score the ball.”
Caleb Waclawski, Moon’s biggest player at 6-foot-4, had 18 points in the loss to Hampton.
“We have to find spots to get him the ball to be effective,” Palmosina said of Waclawski. “We did a little of that (against Hampton) and he gave us a good game offensively. We need to rely on him a little more.”
Hershey, 23-3 overall and the No. 3 team from District 3, reached the PIAA title game a year ago and lost to Neumann-Goretti. The Trojans went 23-3 this season and averaged 62.2 points per game. Most recently Hershey defeated Octorara, 73-39, after losing to West York in the District 3 semifinals, 58-50.
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (Girls) at Central Cambria
The Chargers have had the longest layoff of the three West Hills teams bound for the PIAA tournament, having not suited up in a real game since losing 41-25 to Quaker Valley on Feb. 23 in the WPIAL fifth-place game.
“We like competition, so we lined up a couple of scrimmages, just to play someone other than ourselves,” veteran OLSH coach Don Eckerle said of his team’s time off. “We used this period to go back over some areas that we felt needed improvement.
“It’s beneficial to have some time off, although being off this many days is very challenging. We’re playing a team that just played last Friday, so their layoff is not as long as ours. Plus we’re going to (Central Cambria’s) home court.”
Eckerle, who has been at the OLSH helm since 2003 and has more than 400 wins as the Chargers coach, said he hasn’t spent too much time looking at film of his team’s performance in the WPIAL Tournament, where the Chargers opened with a win over McGuffey, then lost to Greensburg Central Catholic before defeating Waynesburg Central and then falling to Quaker Valley.
“In my case, we’re focused on moving forward,” he said. “We will look at film but we’re really looking at our opponent to see who they are, since they’re not in our district, and what they’re all about. It’s good to have some extra time to get familiar with an opponent.”
OLSH has some familiarity with Central Cambria, as the Chargers played the Red Devils in last year’s PIAA quarterfinals, a game that OLSH won 47-43.
“They like to play fast,” Eckerle said of Central Cambria, which brings a 20-6 record into the game compared with OLSH’s 19-7 mark. “They’ll push it up the court. We have some challenges there as far as defending the transition but we are familiar with them.”
Eckerle said both teams have players who competed in last year’s PIAA tournament, and one of them is Central Cambria’s Katie George, a 5-9 junior forward.
“She’s an excellent outside shooter and their go-to player,” Eckerle said of George. “And they have a couple other complementary players.”
Eckerle said he likes where his team is at this point in the season and added that Sara Daeschner’s return from a knee injury in midseason has made a difference.
“We’ve been extremely competitive in all our games since then,” he said. “She adds a defensive presence that we didn’t have when she wasn’t there.
“From that standpoint, I’m feeling very good. I told the team I have a nice confidence level with this particular group.”
Eckerle said the fact that his team has to travel 90 miles to take on the Red Devils won’t be easy. “Our biggest challenge – and we look forward to the opportunity – is playing on (Central Cambria’s) home court,” he said. “That’s part of the challenge we have and our team knows that as well.”
Eckerle said he hopes to see some OLSH supporters make the trip Friday night but he knows there are other school activities that might keep people home.
“As I like to say, we’re probably on our own,” he said. “We’ll have 30 parents and a couple of friends — and (Central Cambria) will have 300 people.”
Conemaugh Township at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart (Boys)
The Chargers were dealt a major blow when Tiernan McCullough, the team’s standout 6-4 junior guard, sustained a high ankle sprain during a scrimmage against Nazareth Prep. OLSH coach Mike Rodriguez said he wasn’t sure if McCullough would be available for Saturday’s home matchup with Conemaugh Township, which comes into the game with an 18-7 record as District 5’s No. 2 representative.
“This will set us back a bit,” he said of the ill-timed injury. “I thought we would be very competitive (with McCullough) but we’ll try our best.”
Rodriguez said Conemaugh is a solid team with size – notably 6-8 post player Eric McClemens and 6-5 Eric Dinyer — and quickness. He described the Dinyer as the Indians’ top player.
“He’s just tremendous,” Rodriguez said. “He shoots it from anywhere and he can go to the basket. And he’s very physical. He’s going to be a huge challenge.”
McClemens, meanwhile, can finish with either hand around the basket, Rodriguez said. And he said Conemaugh’s backcourt tandem of Steven Stanko and Greyson Studer also is formidable.
In terms of style, Rodriguez said Conemaugh employs a deliberate approach offensively and will use a 2-2-1 press.
“They execute very well,” he said of the Indians. “They won’t beat themselves. They’re a very experienced team with a lot of seniors. They’ve been in a lot of close games, which means they know how to play close games.”
Rodriguez had no complaints with the way his team performed in the WPIAL tournament, where the Chargers won their first two games before losing 56-30 to Sewickley Academy in the semifinals and then edging Clairton, 47-43, in the third-place game on Feb. 25.
“We played well in some games,” said Rodriguez, whose team had won 16 straight games before the loss to Sewickley Academy and now stands 21-5. “We played very well defensively against Clairton.”
Rodriguez said the Chargers certainly will be challenged if McCullough can’t play.
“We just have to step up and have people play different roles,” he said. “We’ll go over everything we do with people in different spots and see what we can do to make things work.”
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