Section rivals meet once again
Beaver has done its level best to put last season’s WPIAL Class 4A championship game loss into the rear view mirror, never to be looked at or reflected upon again.
“We’ve worked really hard not to talk about it, to be honest and I think it’s always in the back of everybody’s head, that disappointment we felt last year and three years ago as well,” Beaver coach Greg Huston said. “Certainly, there’s some motivation to finish the job, but we’ve just left it off in the distance and tried to take it one day at a time. I think it’s always in the back of your head that you want to make up for that.”
Though the venue has changed, from Petersen Events Center to the state-of-the-art AHN Arena at Peters Township, as has the foe, from Mohawk to Quaker Valley (16-4), the basic premise for Beaver (19-0) is the same as it was a year ago. For the Bobcats to win the school’s first title, they must defeat a section opponent they have already faced twice during the regular season. Tip-off for the championship game is 5 p.m.
“I’m sitting here watching film and you’re thinking about what you want to do game-plan wise. There’s also the mental part of it, but that’s something I have to
figure out in the next 24 hours so we can get prepared,” Huston said. “I think we were a little shell-shocked last year and, hopefully, this year, with that experience, we can draw from that. There’s certainly some changes I need to make as a coach as well to have us more prepared.”
While Beaver has been to the championship game twice in the previous three years, this will be uncharted territory for Quaker Valley, which has never appeared in the finals. But it may be an advantage that the two squads have already seen each other twice previously.
“I think these girls are very excited about getting that chance to beat a team that’s undefeated, a team that got us twice and, although those games were tight, we didn’t do what we needed to do to finish those games,” Quaker Valley coach Tom Demko said. “I like the flow of things and how they’re going for us right now.”
In their first meeting, Quaker Valley had a 22-20 lead at halftime and was tied, 31-31, heading into the fourth quarter before Emma Pavelek, who had 22 in the win against Knoch in the semifinals, scored five of her 18 to pull it out, 40-37. Their second was similar as the Quakers led at halftime, 22-19, as Bailey Garbee scored nine of her 22 in the first half before Pavelek scored 14 of her 22 after the intermission in a 48-42 Bobcats victory.
“I think we’ve got to look at the positives of those games and, in the second game, we came out fast and got a good start and let them come back into the game,” Demko said. “I just think that we have to know that no lead is safe and you’ve got to hang in there and play good defense. It is really all about defense against this team we’re playing now.”
That pattern of getting out to a big lead and holding on worked against Southmoreland in the semifinals. Quaker Valley had an 18point, third-quarter lead against the Scotties, but let them chip away until they got it down to 56-50 with less than a minute remaining before the Quakers finished off a 6050 win.
That will not work against a team like Beaver with scorers like Pavelek and Payton List who can play defense and create turnovers almost at will. Though Quaker Valley may have been an exception in its two games thanks to 1,000-point scorers Garbee and Corinne Washington, the Bobcats have allowed fewer than 25 points to 11 of their 19 opponents and more than 40 only twice.
“I think it’s going to be really fun to play Beaver again for the third time and try to get one more chance at them,” Garbee said. “We had them in the second game we played them and just gave up the lead, but I think this time, we’re going to be more ready than ever. I think the first two games have really helped us for this game coming up on Friday.”
Still, one of the biggest things for both teams to shrug off will be that this is like a section game. Even though they are section foes with two games against each other under their belts, the stakes are higher with the school’s first WPIAL title to the victor as well as a berth in the PIAA playoffs.
“It’s never easy to beat a team three times in a season and Quaker Valley is a really good team with a lot of really good players. It doesn’t matter if it’s a section game, a WPIAL championship game or a scrimmage in the backyard, you know you’re getting a really tough game,” Huston said. “I think that’s the biggest thing we have to remember — it doesn’t matter what you’re playing for, you’re going to get their best and we’ve got to bring our best.”