La Roche’s impressive run comes to end

drought. True to their personality, the Redhawks sliced the margin to six with eight minutes remaining, but it was not enough.

The Redhawks’ field-goal percentage of 24 percent (14 of 59) was well below their season mark of 44.2. Ditto for their scoring total, which was 38 points fewer than their average.

“Our guys fought from start to finish against the 12thranked team in the country,” said Carmichael, a former star guard at La Roche. “We defended,we executed, we just didn’t make shots. ... In the end, we went out and represented La Roche basketball the way we wanted, through ourcore values.””

The star this season was Bajgora, a 6-foot-7 center who averaged 12.9 points, 6.8 rebounds and converted 53 percent of his field-goal attempts. Heleaves the program ranked second all time in scoring (1,419)and rebounding (673).

He and teammates junior RayQuan Phifer and sophomore Trell Thomas, both Ohio natives, were named first-team All-AMCC. It was Bajgora’s third consecutive selection.

Other WPIAL products whocontributed to La Roche’s run were sophomores Darius Lawrence (a starting guard from Ambridge), Kennedy Smith (Steel Valley) and Torry Hawkins (South Park), juniors Darrell Barron (Northgate), Ryan Norkus (Seton LaSalle) and Evan Brown (Lincoln Park) and freshmen Austin Hannes (Knoch) and TylerFrederick (Butler).

The team’s tone-setter was Gould, who poured in 26 points in the AMCC championshipwin against Penn State Behrend. He went 9 of 11 from the field, 6 of 7 from 3-point range and 2 of 2 from the freethrowline.

He said the program is on the upswing thanks to its team-firstculture.

“We all bond,” he said. “We joke. We hang out. It’s a brotherhood, something you can’t putinto words. We just click.”