South Fayette makes the right call
Webber has to sit with foul trouble, but comes back to win the title
South Fayette coach Bryan Bennett had a dilemma.
With the Lions leading by six and 1:47 left in the first quarter, senior guard Maddie Webber picked up her second personal foul. At that point, he had to decide whether he wanted his leading scorer to ride the pine the remainder of the first half or take a chance on her picking up her third foul.
In the end, he opted to let her sit.
“It was not an easy one, I’ll tell you that,” Bennett said. “We felt that if we could ride it out and keep the game close, it was better to keep her on the bench and prevent a third foul and risk something happening in the second half.”
It may not have been a simple choice, but it turned out to be the right one.
Webber may have missed 9:47, but she came back with a vengeance in the second half. The Villanova recruit scored 12 of her 16 points after she re-entered the game in the third quarter and helped No. 1 South Fayette (24-2) to a 64-49 win against No. 2 Oakland Catholic (22-3) in the Class 5A girls basketball championship at Petersen Events Center.
“I trust my teammates so much and I know they’re great players, but it’s hard just watching it because you want to be on the court,” Webber said. “I know it was the smartest thing to do because I didn’t want to get my third.”
Instead, South Fayette got its second as the Lions joined the team it defeated in the finals last year, Chartiers Valley, as the only teams to win consecutive titles in Class 5A since the PIAA expanded to six classifications for the 2016-17 school year.
“I think it means a lot, especially for (the) seniors,” South Fayette senior forward Rachel Black said. “We all wanted to get it and it means a lot.”
All that may have changed had the strategy to keep Webber on the bench backfired.
At the time of her second foul, Webber was just beginning to get into a groove. She had just scored the second of back-to-back baskets and had South Fayette out to an 11-5 lead.
For Oakland Catholic, it couldn’t have come at a better time. The Lions were in the middle of an 8-2 run and Webber leaving the game was just the kickstart the
Eagles needed to take control of the game. And they did.
To an extent. Without Webber birddogging her, Oakland Catholic senior guard Alexa Washington finally got to the rim. The North Florida recruit scored nine of her 11 firsthalf points in the second quarter and hit two free throws with 4.5 seconds to play to give the Eagles a 25-23 lead at the intermission.
Though the game went back and forth for the first few minutes of the third quarter, the Lions took control when they closed out the period on a 10-3 run to take a 39-33 lead.
“Not many high school kids get to experience this, whether you win or lose,” Bennett said. “We’re fortunate to be here and the reason we’re here is because of their hard work.”