Last-second miss knocks out OLSH
Our Lady of the Sacred Heart trailed Bishop Guilfoyle by a point with seven seconds left when Chargers senior Austin Wigley pulled in a rebound and raced the length of the floor, firing up a desperation runner just before the buzzer.
No good.
OLSH senior Ricco Tate’s putback came a fraction of a second too late, and the Marauders bench stormed the court to celebrate a thrilling 62-61 victory at Kiski Area High School that earned them a trip to Hershey for the PIAA Class 2A championship game. And just like that, the Chargers’ groundbreaking season — in which they captured the first WPIAL championship in school history — is over.
Even though his team missed out on a chance to make back-to-back state championship games, OLSH coach Mike Rodriguez has no regrets about the way Tuesday night’s game or the season as a whole played out.
“I’m proud of my team,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll find no fault in this loss. In my book, we won the game. Whether we lost it or not on the scoreboard, in my book we won the game.”
Chargers sophomore point guard Dante Spadafora led all players with 27 points, while Bishop Guilfoyle guards Luke Ruggery and Jessiah Witherspoon finished with 19 points apiece.
“Everything I had in me, I gave it,” Spadafora said. “I gave everything in my heart, all the energy. I honestly thought I was going to pass out at the end. It’s tough losing, but honestly, that’s just maturing, and that’s going to come with life. And sometimes you take losses, but it’s how you get back up from the losses.”
From the opening whistle, the game was a hotly contested affair with both teams executing on offense and playing sound defense. It showed on the scoreboard, as the teams ended the first quarter tied, 15-15, and the Marauders leading, 34-32, at halftime.
“We had opportunities to win the game,” Rodriguez said. “It was back and forth. We were going on runs, they were going on runs. That was a great game.”
Bishop Guilfoyle jumped out to a 45-36 lead right after the break, but OLSH responded with a 14-0 run sparked by one of Spadafora’s six 3-pointers. That gave the Chargers a 52-47 lead heading into the final quarter. Bishop Guilfoyle kept chipping away, though, and regained the lead on a 3-pointer by Witherspoon with two minutes left.
OLSH forced a turnover while trailing by one with 22.3 seconds left, then Tate drew a foul but missed both of his free throws with seven seconds to play. That’s when Ruggery went to the line for Bishop Guilfoyle and missed the front end of a one-and-one to set up Wigley’s last-ditch drive.
After finishing as a runnerup in the WPIAL and PIAA playoffs last year, Rodriguez said he considers this season to be a greater success even without making it back to Hershey.
“I’m so proud of these boys,” he said. “This is the most decorated senior class to come through OLSH in its history. How can I be down on them? We miss a couple of free throws at the end, it doesn’t tell how our season went. Our season was outstanding.”