Reading, Mifflin are champions
Girls: Mustangs down Wilson for their fifth title in eight seasons
Gov. Mifflin continued one of the most successful runs in BCIAA girls basketball championship game history on Friday night.
The fourth-seeded Mustangs defeated third-seeded Wilson 47-34 at Santander Arena to win their third Berks championship in the last four years and fifth in the last eight years.
“This championship really means a lot,” said Gov. Mifflin coach Mike Clark, who is 5-1 in county title games since he became coach of the Mustangs ahead of the 2012-13 season. “This means a lot for this group to buy in and not be a one-man team.”
Gov. Mifflin (17-8) played as a cohesive unit on Friday night, sharing the ball and playing stifling defense on all areas of the floor. Four Mustangs scored at least six points.
In her first career Berks title game, Gov. Mifflin junior Shakyla Mayo led all scorers with 19 points and was the spark that ignited the Mustang early in the game.
Mayo scored nine points in the first quarter and played lockdown defense to lift Gov. Mifflin to a 14-7 lead after eight minutes of play. Led by Mayo, the Mustangs pressured the Bulldogs and took advantage of several turnovers.
“Shakyla (has) been doing that all season,” Clark said. “She (has) been doing the rebounding, the passing (and generating) the motivation all season.”
The county championship is the first for Shakyla Mayo and her sister, Shyanna, as they transferred from Muhlenberg to Gov. Mifflin ahead of the 2020-21 season. In just the second game of their respective careers at Santander Arena, the pair combined for 25 points.
“It means a lot to me,” Shakyla Mayo said. “It’s just an allaround good feeling.”
The Mustangs rolled their momentum from the first quarter into the second and started the quarter with an 11-4 run. Gov. Mifflin protected the paint and frustrated the Bulldogs on both ends of the floor.
The Mustangs, the top 3-point shooting team in the Berks Girls Basketball League, made a trio of 3-pointers in the second quarter on the way to a 25-14 halftime lead.
“I thought we really spaced the floor,” Clark said. “We really did a great job on the boards.”
After an extremely quiet first half, Gov. Mifflin’s leading scorer — sophomore Taylor Koenig — began to find her stride in the second half. She scored her first points of the game midway through the third quarter and finished with 11.
“I was just really nervous and antsy in the first half,” Koenig said. “Things started to come for me (in the second half) and I started hitting shots when I needed to.”
Behind Koenig, Gov. Mifflin led comfortably until midway through the fourth quarter, when Wilson began fouling in an effort to cut into the Mustangs’ 12-point lead.
“We obviously had to start fouling a little bit earlier than I would normally want to,” Bulldogs coach Chris Gallo said. “We were chasing, and I figured our only shot was to do that.”
The strategy appeared to work at first, as Gov. Mifflin struggled to make free throws. Wilson (17-6) cut its deficit to just six on two separate occasions, but did not get any closer.
Gov. Mifflin was 13-for-33 from the line in the fourth quarter, but the Bulldogs were unable to take advantage. The Mustangs outrebounded Wilson on the missed free throws by a wide margin, and therefore kept possession of the ball.
Gov. Mifflin made several of its free throws in the final seconds of the game to seal it. Koenig led the Mustangs in free throws made, as she went 6-for13.
“It means so much,” Koenig said about winning the title. “I wanted this so much.”
Gov. Mifflin held the Bulldogs to 34 points, their third-fewest point total of the season. Senior Keira Levengood led Wilson with 11 points.
“(They) packed in the zone (defense),” Gallo said about the Mustangs. “I still thought we got some decent looks that didn’t fall tonight.”
Wilson will try to regroup in the District 3 Class 6A playoffs as a No. 9 seed. The Bulldogs will play at eighth-seeded Penn Manor in the first round on Monday night.
“We got to get ready for Monday,” Gallo said. “They’re upset now, but they’re going to be more upset if it’s the last (game of the season).”
The Mustangs will look to ride the momentum from their Berks title into their first-round District 3 Class 6A playoff game. No. 11 seed Gov. Mifflin will play at No. 6 seed Cumberland Valley.
“We’re county champions,” Shakyla Mayo said. “We have to use that (momentum) in districts.”