No. 1 Quakers remain unbeaten
Quaker Valley rolls by No. 2 New Castle, earning revenge for WPIAL final
New Castle stopped Quaker Valley from finishing the WPIAL season unbeaten in March 2018 when it upset the Quakers in the championship.
Friday night, Quaker Valley, again undefeated, got a little revenge. The team was able to do so because its leading scorer did a lot of finishing.
Ryan Stowers scored 33 points, with just about all of his points coming at the rim and in transition, as No. 1-ranked Quaker Valley used a dominant third quarter to grab a 67-48 win at No. 2 New Castle in a battle of Class 4A Section 2 powers.
It was the 20th consecutive section win for Quaker Valley (9-0, 3-0), which has not suffered a section defeat in nearly two years.
New Castle (7-2, 2-0) lost to Quaker Valley twice last season, but the Red Hurricanes topped the Quakers, 23-0 at the time, in the WPIAL final for the second year in a row in the championship.
“We put that behind us and came back with a fire in our game,” said Stowers, who, along with teammate Danny Conlan, started in last year’s title game.
“We just came out and tried to do as well as we could and tried to make a statement that we’re not the same team as last year.”
Stowers is a 6-foot-5 senior guard who entered the night averaging 22 points per game. He’s an excellent 3-pointer shooter who made five attempts each in two recent games.
Friday, though, he did his damage much closer to the basket.
“He got a ton of points in transition,” New Castle coach Ralph Blundo said.
“He’s going to get out and run, he’s long and he’s a really good finisher. The first thing on our board was our transition defense had to be really good, and it wasn’t.”
Quaker Valley coach Mike Mastroianni added, “I would say he’s one of the best shooters in the WPIAL. He can really shoot, but he plays like a senior. When you’re older, you get to the rim, and Ryan is doing that much better.”
It was a back-and-forth contest for almost a full half, but Quaker Valley began to make its move late in the second quarter. The Quakers went on a 6-1 run in the final 1:15 of the first half to take a 33-29 lead into the break.
Quaker Valley then took full control in the third quarter.
The Quakers outscored New Castle, 19-6, to take a commanding 52-35 lead. It’s rare to see a New Castle team held to so few points in a quarter, but Quaker Valley stifled the Red Hurricanes when it went into a 2-3 zone defense.
The defensive scheme forced New Castle into taking a lot of shots from outside the arc, and they converted only five shots on 33 total attempts from range. Coming into the game, the Red Hurricanes were shooting 22 percent from 3point range on the year.
“The first quarter, we came out playing a 3-2 and then we switched into a 23,” Stowers said.
“We were kind of sagging off and letting them shoot because they were getting a lot of boards and getting to the hoop a lot in the first half. So we kind of sagged off and they weren’t hitting shots today.”
New Castle has the No. 1 scoring offense in Class 4A (69.7 points per game), but was held below 61 points for the first time this season.
Conlan added 15 points for Quaker Valley, who also got 10 points from starting freshman point guard Adou Thiero.
New Castle, which is breaking in five new starters this season, was led by freshman guard Michael Wells’ 14 points.