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Charleroi can’t keep pace with OLSH

3 min read

CANONSBURG – Charleroi’s John Arnold filled the stats sheet Wednesday night in the Cougars’ first round Class AA playoff game against Our Lady of Sacred Heart.

Arnold finished with 13 points, 11 rebounds and seven blocked shots, but the Cougars need more from their entire lineup as they were defeated by Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, 72-36, in a Class AA first-round playoff game at Canon-McMillan.

OLSH (15-7), which was led in scoring by Santino Platt with 15 points, advances to the quarterfinals to take on No. 3 seed Seton-La Salle.

“It was a big win for us against a well-coached team,” said OLSH head coach Mike Rodriguez. “We played with some intensity and executed well at both ends of the floor.”

OLSH came out and pushed the tempo right off the bat, not wanting to get into a half-court game in which Arnold’s size could play a major role.

The strategy worked as the up-and-down pace forced the Cougars into plenty of mistakes and created good scoring opportunities at the offensive end for the Chargers.

“We wanted to keep pushing the tempo,” said Rodriguez. “We definitely didn’t want to play a half-court game against them. We had to negate their size. Arnold is such a presence inside that we wanted to make him run the floor a lot. Our speed played a big role.”

Turnovers plagued the Cougars from the opening tip as Charleroi (12-10) had problems against an aggressive OLSH defense.

Leading 6-4 three minutes into the game, OLSH then went on a 15-0 run. A big part of that run came with Arnold on the bench after picking up his second foul, which opened up more driving lanes for the Chargers.

“We let it slip away when Arnold picked up his second foul,” said Charleroi head coach Bill Wiltz. “I thought we played well for the first three or four minutes. We went a little bit smaller and we couldn’t rebound the ball. We just couldn’t get the momentum back.”

OLSH scored the first seven points of the second quarter and finished the half on a 12-2 run to take a 40-16 lead at the half.

Much of the Chargers’ success came off drives. When OLSH wasn’t making layups, the Chargers got offensive rebounds and beat Charleroi to loose balls.

“We thought the 50-50 balls were critical for us,” said Rodriguez. “We wanted to get to every loose ball and rebound and then push the ball from there. Getting to loose balls helped us extend the floor and get some easy looks.”

In addition to the big game from Platt, Collin Neville and Hunter Szilagy each chipped in 13 points for the Chargers, who demonstrated a balanced scoring attack with 10 different players making at least a shot.

Charleroi, who will return three starters next season, will have to look back at plenty of costly mistakes with the basketball that ultimately proved costly.

“They did a good job of taking away passing lanes,” said Wiltz. “But we are normally better than that. We don’t usually turn it over that often. The kicker was that the turnovers turned into points for them. I can handle the turnovers if we get back on defense. But when it turns into easy layups it is tough to recover.”

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