Mills builds lead, Marisa finishes as PT defeats Trinity
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Peters Township’s Olivia Ziegler (22) looks for room around Trinity’s Jayme Britton.
Peters Twp’s Isabella Quarture (24) scores two against Trinity’s Jayme Britton
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Alayna Cappelli (15) looks for room around Peters Twp’s Lauren Stahl during the second quarter
Holly Tonini/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Allie Scarfo looks for room to pass over Peters Township’s Isabella Quarture.
Trinity’s Marlaina Bozek (21) scores two against Peters Township's Makenna Marisa.
Peters Twp’s Isabella Mills scores against Trinity’s Marlaina Bozek (21) and Jayme Britton in the first quarter.
Building a lead, with four different players doing the scoring, in the first half, Peters Township High School girls basketball head coach Bert Kendall’s impression of his team not being a one-trick pony was gaining momentum and legitimacy.
For the first two quarters of a non-section matchup Monday against Trinity, Kendall was spot on with that assessment.
“We’re not just a one-dimensional team,” he said.
While the first half proved that, the second half might have just as easily eradicated it.
Junior guard Makenna Marisa scored a game-high 26 points, including 20 of the Indians’ 22 second-half points, to lead Peters Township to a 51-35 over Trinity at Hiller Hall.
Marisa quickly halted two late comeback attempts by the Hillers – one at the end of the third quarter and the other in the middle of the fourth – as she scored Peters Township’s final 14 points to help stall the short-lived runs by Trinity.
“She is a pretty good player, a versatile player,” Trinity head coach Bob Miles said about Marisa. “You put a lot of your focus on her, but when (Peters Township) was having other girls making shots it was deflating.”
That’s exactly why Trinity found itself trailing early in the game.
After building a quick 8-2 lead with three-pointers from Marisa and Oliva Ziegler in the opening three minutes, Peters Township relied on Isabella Mills to break the game wide open.
Mills scored nine points in the final 1:18 of the first quarter, including a straightaway three-pointer with 57 seconds left, to quickly extend the Indians’ lead to 21-8.
“Isabella is a great shooter,” Kendall said. “This year she has been developing her inside game. I think a lot of her success is coming from rebounding the ball like crazy.”
But dominating the glass wasn’t only a result of Mills, who finished with 14 points and nine rebounds.
Peters Township (3-0) continued to get second-chance opportunities by grabbing rebounds, a part of its game that Kendall has recently stressed.
“We work on it in practice. We had stressed it all summer,” Kendall said about rebounding. “I often saw when Trinity put up a shot that we had inside position in a triangle underneath the hoop. That’s just playing with good fundamentals. We don’t have a true post player and have to rely on fundamentals to be able to grab rebounds.”
Marisa grabbed 10 rebounds to finish with a double-double.
The Indians took a 29-16 lead into halftime when Mills connected on a baseline three-pointer with two seconds remaining in the second quarter off an inbounds play from the baseline.
Trinity (2-1), which failed to score at least 40 points in a regular-season game for the first time since Jan. 19, 2015, was hindered by turnovers and having to exert most of its energy on the defensive end.
“We were careless with the basketball in the beginning,” Miles said. “Because of our inability to handle the basketball and rebound, we were playing each possession on defense basically twice. The lack of focus is the biggest frustration for me. You cover something at practice, then we go out on the floor and it’s like we’ve never heard of it. It’s the maturation process, I think.”
Riley DeRubbo scored a team-high 16 points for Trinity, and Alayna Cappelli finished with nine.
“It puts a lot of pressure on them without a doubt,” Miles said of their offense running strictly through DeRubbo and Cappelli.
“They need someone to give them a break. We need that player to step up and do that. We just haven’t been able to get to that point yet, but it’s only the third game of the season.”