Liberty moves the ball and moves into finals

Nigel Long said it’s important to appreciate the moment and he took time to do just that Wednesday night in the hallway outside Liberty’s boys basketball locker room.

“It’s hard to get here,” he said. “This is our 26th game and you have the offseason and all that; there’s a lot of work that goes into it.”

Game No. 27 for Long’s Hurricanes will come Saturday night in the District 11 6A championship game. They are in the final game of the district tournament for the second straight year and for the second straight year they will go against Parkland. The game is set for 8 p.m. Saturday at Easton Area Middle School.

But after beating Emmaus for the second straight season in the 6A semifinals — this time by a 53-42 margin Wednesday night at Allen’s Sewards Gym — Liberty will hope to flip the script after losing to Parkland 57-43 in last year’s title game.

Based on their performance against the No. 2 seeded Green Hornets (19-7), the Hurricanes definitely have a shot at getting the program’s first district championship since Darrun Hilliard’s junior year in 2010 and fifth overall.

Blake Hargrove led a balanced attack with 15 points. Angel Ho lguinh ad 10 and three guys had eight and Liberty never trailed in avenging a December loss to Emma us.

Of the Hurricanes’ 18 field goals, 14 were assisted — seven by junior Caden Vermuelen. It was all too much for the Green Hornets to overcome.

“The ball moves and the scoreboard moves; that’s something that I saw [DeSales] Coach [Scott] Coval said and it’s so true,” Long said. “We’re much harder to guard when we’re moving the ball and sharing it. We made shots. Angel Holguin hit huge shots, Blake obviously [too]. We obviously got a lot of high quality shots.”

At the other end, Emmaus never could get into a rhythm. The Green Hornets were just 3-for-10 from the field in the first quarter, 5-for-20 in the first half and 15-for-45 in the game. It’s a big reason why they could never get the upper hand.

“You can’t shoot 5-for-20 in the first half in the district semis,” Emmaus coach Steve Yoder said. “That put us in a tough spot. I thought our kids showed a lot of heart in the second half and we expended a lot of energy to get back within two and I was excited at that point and they were excited, but we ran out of gas. The bottom line is they made more shots than us. That 5-for-20 start … we just couldn’t overcome that. We had open looks and they just wouldn’t fall.”