Greencastle’s PIAA quest halted by Cardinal O’Hara

By Ed Gotwals 3/13/22

 

WEST YORK — Too tall. Too much reach. Too good of a defense. Too many many skilled players.

 

Lauren Pool

 

Cardinal O’Hara had lots of factors in its favor Sunday night and the result was a 57-29 victory over Greencastle-Antrim in a PIAA Class 5A second round girls basketball game at West York H.S. The Lions will play Springfield (Delco) in the quarterfinals Wednesday.

 

Not that they didn’t try and didn’t do everything they could to solve the huge challenge, but the Blue Devils came up short against the defending state champions.

 

“They were as advertised,” Greencastle coach Mike Rhine said. “In my 11 years here, we’ve never had a player who was 6-feet and it seemed like they had, what, five of them tonight? We really had our hands full.”

 

That was evident from the start. While Haley Noblit gunned in a 3-pointer to give G-A its only lead of the game at 3-2, the Lions blocked five of the Blue Devils’ first six shots and had nine blocks in the game. One of the Blue Devils’ strengths is Noblit (5-foot-2) and Mia Libby (5-1) beating their defenders on the dribble and scoring on drives, but that option was nearly silenced except for a handful of artistic baskets by Noblit.

 

While Greencastle was trying to find a new tactic for its offense, Cardinal O’Hara put together a 12-0 run, and extended it to a 21-6 advantage early in the second quarter. Molly Rullo (5-10) scored 11 of her 22 points in the first half, Maggie Doogan (6-2) had six points and Annie Welde (6-0) knocked down a pair of 3-pointers.

 

G-A forward Lauren Pool, her team’s tallest player at 5-9, said, “I haven’t played against a team that tall. It was difficult — we had to be smarter, do more fakes and move the ball quicker.”

 

Greencastle did score 7 of the next 9 points, bookended by a pair of jumpers by Pool, to close to 23-13, but the Lions finished the half on an 8-0 run sparked by three buckets from Joanie Quinn.

 

Rhine said, “In the beginning, we had nowhere to go (on offense), and we were standing around. You almost felt like there was nothing you could do. We tried to drive and then kick it out to a shooter, but we didn’t make enough threes (4 total). We did the best we could.”

In the third quarter, the Blue Devils’ clamped down on defense, outscored Cardinal O’Hara 10-8 as Noblit and Meadow Gambacurta hit 3-pointers, and closed to within 38-23. But the Lions opened the fourth by dropping in a trio of threes among their first four baskets and quickly pushed their lead to 55-25.

 

A sophomore, Noblit tallied 15 points and Pool had 6. Doogan (13) and Welde (19) supported Rullo’s big game for O’Hara.

 

For G-A, which finished 22-5, Pool also snared 7 rebounds, Noblit had 4 boards and 4 assists, Rylee Henson had 3 rebounds and Libby had 2 boards and 3 steals.

 

The Blue Devils have made it to the state tournament three times under Rhine and are 3-3, having not made it past the second round.

 

“I’m proud of these girls — they fought all the way to the end,” he said. “This is probably my favorite team because they came to play every day, they compete hard and they love basketball.”

 

Pool, the only graduating senior starter and a four-year starter, said, “We played our hearts out tonight. I’m very happy with my career — I just love these girls and I love this sport.”

 

NOTE: Cardinal O’Hara’s record is either 22-5 (actual games played), or 2-25 (PIAA’s version), or 12-15 (another website source) … The Lions self-reported some paperwork issues in the time period between the league playoffs and the PIAA tournament concerning a player who transferred to the school before the season started … In a transfer situation, both schools must file paperwork, and, apparently, O’Hara was the only one to do so … Since the player played in all of the team’s games, the PIAA considers the first 25 games to be forfeit defeats … The team’s only punishment was to be dropped from District 12’s No. 1 seed to the No. 3 seed.