Jake Santo, Managing Editor, Michael Sciulli, Sports Editor
It was a frigid Friday night in Harrison City, Pa. when section foes Penn Hills Indians and Penn-Trafford Warriors squared off for a girls and boys basketball back to back. The Indians took both games from the Warriors with convincing wins.
First on the slate was a matchup between the girls teams. The Indians came into the game ranked number one in the WPIAL 6A Section 2, according to msasports.net, with a record of 8-2 overall and 2-0 within the section. P-T on the other hand came in on msasports.net’s rankings as the number four ranked team in the section with an overall record of 6-2 with a 1-1 record in section play.
To start off just looking at the two teams it is quite apparent that Penn Hills had a size advantage of the Warriors with the exception of P-T’s senior forward Taylor Wisniewski. The Indians also started off with high pressing early on causing problems among the Warriors backcourt. These problems caused P-T to turn the ball over several times early which led to Penn Hills going on a 15-1 run to end the first quarter with the score 17-3 in favor of the Indians. During this run Penn Hills scored a decent amount of their points in the paint and in transition.
The second quarter started off a little slow, but then the Warriors got some shots to fall inside, and began to mount a comeback. P-T had a nice run through to end the half, but still found themselves down by 11 with the score at 30-19.
At the end of the first half the Warriors had the momentum. However, the pendulum swayed back towards the Indians. Shades of the first quarter emerged as Penn Hills overmatched P-T took the victory by the final score of 60-35.
Next up on the ballot was a matchup between the two boys teams. This game saw the undefeated Indians take on the 3-6 Warriors who had an 0-3 section record entering the game. With P-T needing to get back into the win column they came out swinging against a larger Penn Hills team. This was the second meeting for former Penn Hills and current Penn-Trafford head coach, Jim Rocco who previously coached the Indians for 19 years before coming to P-T.
The Warriors assault came from deep as they were tossing up threes early and often. Sophomore Kevin Stinelli came out hot and had a performance to remember for a long time. Stinelli made two threes in the first three minutes of the game on his way to a 31 point night. 27 of the 31 came from beyond the arc as the sophomore drained nine threes on the night. Four of which were sunk in the first quarter.
This performance along with tough interior defense led by sophomore Chris Abreu allowed the Warriors to take a 26 to 21 game into the second quarter. However a problem for both teams was fouls.
The referees were active with their whistles as each team was nearing the bonus entering the second. This is where the Indians hit their stride as they did an excellent job of getting to the line throughout the game. Getting to the line as well as decent outside shooting, hard work in the paint and P-T turnovers early in the quarter saw Penn Hills take a five point lead into halftime with the score 45-40.
With momentum on their side the Indians game out of that gates in the third quarter. Although Stinelli stayed hot, Penn Hills began to pull away from the Warriors with some more outside shooting of their own. While the Indians began to get shots to fall, P-T’s offense went stagnant and saw them head to the fourth quarter down by 17 points.
With the crowd out of the game Penn Hills kept pushing, earning more trips to the charity stripe early on in the final quarter. On the other end of the floor Stinelli was still making it splash from out side with two more threes in the quarter along with two of his own points from the foul line.
However, a new problem for the Warriors emerged as the Indians began to move their offense inside. They began to dominate the paint, and just like most the rest of the second half, Penn Hills overmatched P-T on their way to a 92-66 victory.
After two tough losses against section rivals both the boys and girls Warrior basketball teams will hope to bounce back quickly. Both teams hope to get back into the win column on Tuesday away at Fox Chapel.
If you would like to view the box scores for each of these games, that can be found with link below.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13RK43IZF-N2fxVNb80jHrgVEM6n_ifx06pCGt4ie8Ac/edit?usp=sharing