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Wash High girls find winning formula

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The storybook season of 2015 is a distant memory for Chartiers-Houston. The run to the PIAA Class AA girls basketball quarterfinals with a young roster captured the attention of opponents across the WPIAL, but less than a year later, the Bucs look drastically different.

They no longer have a dominant post player to block shots, grab rebounds and take over games.

If the Bucs are going to embark on another playoff run, they’ll have to do it without sophomore Alexa Williamson. The 6-1 forward will undergo season-ending surgery today to repair a torn ACL, shifting the focus of Chartiers-Houston’s offense to junior Jala Walker.

Walker, a lightning quick point guard, has discovered a role as C-H’s top offensive threat and Washington found that out during the second quarter Thursday night.

Searching for answers after Walker led the Bucs to a 10-point halftime lead, Prexies head coach Mike Maltony took advice from an unlikely source. Freshman point guard Torri Finley insisted on guarding Walker in the final 16 minutes in a box-and-one formation and it proved to be the winning formula.

Though Walker scored 10 of her game-high 19 points in the second half, Wash High turned turnovers into 35 points to secure a 47-37 non-section win over Chartiers-Houston at home.

The Prexies (13-4) forced 13 turnovers in the second half and capitalized with six different players scoring during that span to hand the Bucs their second consecutive loss. Outside of Walker, Chartiers-Houston got only five points from the rest of its roster in the second half.

“True to form, she shut down (Walker) and I think it rattled them,” Maltony said. “She’s the go-to person right now, she wants the ball. We took them out of the game with that, our shots started falling and we got comfortable. It helped us fight back.”

Wash High trailed by 12 points with under six minutes remaining in the third quarter when it started its comeback. While C-H committed eight turnovers, the Prexies used a balanced scoring effort to mount a 12-2 run to end the quarter and took a 31-28 lead on Finley’s three-point play early in the fourth.

The breakdowns on defense continued to add up for the Bucs (12-5). After limiting Wash High senior Tajah Gordon in the first half and taking away passing lanes for players cutting to the basket, Wash High made six easy layups in the fourth quarter.

Gordon, who had a team-high 16 points with 16 rebounds, put the score out of reach when she caught a baseline inbounds pass and her layup gave Wash High an eight-point lead with 1:12 remaining.

Since losing Williamson, who was averaging more than 19 points per game, Chartiers-Houston head coach Laura Montecalvo, a former standout guard at Wash High, had to alter the game plan and players are now being asked to take on new roles. That’s shown the past two games.

“We basically told (the players) that this is rock bottom for us,” Montecalvo said. “It has been really tough because the kid’s spirits are down. When you lose your best player, you don’t just bounce back from that and act like it never happened. We said that it just has to be the ultimate team game. Everyone has to work together, but we’re still waiting for that to happen.”

The plan was orchestrated well in the first half, when Walker used her speed and athleticism to force turnovers and the Bucs held Gordon to seven points. Wash High was just 4 of 23 from the field in the first half and its young guards tried to force the ball inside to Gordon and senior Mikala Maltony.

Chartiers-Houston held Wash High to just five second-quarter points and broke the Prexies’ trap defense with easy baskets by Walker, but one adjustment changed the narrative and left more questions than answers for the Bucs.

“At halftime, we had a little heart-to-heart talk about some of the assignments we weren’t doing, some of the bad passes we were making, and I think they got the message,” Mike Maltony said. “Everyone contributed to this win and it’s a big one for us.”

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