South Fayette’s defense denies Ringgold a victory
Nya Adams of Ringgold passes the ball while being guarded by South Fayette defenders Jordan Head and Maddie Gutierrez during a WPIAL Class A playoff game Friday night at Peters Township High School.
South Fayette’s Carlee Kilgus drives past a Ringgold defender and scores during a WPIAL Class A playoff game Friday night.
McMURRAY – Sometimes the most simple halftime adjustment can blow open a close contest.
South Fayette coach Matt Bacco decided to take the ball out of the hands of Ringgold’s best ball handler in the second half of Friday night’s first round WPIAL Class 5-A girls playoff game at Peters Township.
The result of that strategical adjustment was the catalyst to a 60-37 Lady Lions win. With the victory, South Fayette (17-5) moves on to the second round of the WPIAL while the Rams season ends at 12-11.
The Lions will meet Chartiers Valley, a 53-42 winner over Thomas Jefferson, next Saturday at a site and time yet to determined.
“We wanted to disrupt their rhythm because they were controlling the tempo up to that point,” Bacco said. “We didn’t want to get into a low-scoring game. We’re more comfortable when we are in a more high-scoring game. We wanted to force them into a transition game and get some easy buckets.”
Realizing Ringgold freshman point guard Nya Adams was controlling the pace and getting the ball inside to Ashley Briscoe with relative ease, Bacco instructed Jordan Head to simply deny Adams the ball and shadow her all over the floor in the second-half. As a result, Ringgold’s offense was stifled as South Fayette pulled away beginning in the early stages of the third quarter.
“It’s definitely something that we need to look at going forward into next season,” Ringgold coach Erika McCarthy said. “We need to get better handling the ball from other players outside Nya.”
South Fayette forced 24 Ringgold turnovers.
Both squads used much of the first-half to get a feel for the playoff atmosphere. Briscoe held the Rams in the game by scoring eight first half points. But two Carlee Kilgus three-pointers to go along with three second quarter field goals from Maddie Gutierrez helped stake South Fayette to a 21-15 halftime lead.
“I thought for the first half, our kids played really hard, especially on defense,” McCarthy noted. “But as you could see, we needed someone else other than Ashley to score. That was the difference right there. That and we turned it over way too much, especially in the second-half.”
Briscoe would go on to finish with a game-high 21 points, most of which coming in the second-half with Lions swarming her in the paint.
“She is a heck of a player for sure,” Bacco said of Briscoe. “She’s big. She can shoot and has really good touch around the basket. She was definitely someone that we were aware of.”
But a 23-9 run in the third quarter was too much even for Briscoe to overcome.
South Fayette was paced by eight points from Gutierrez in the third quarter, including two three-pointers that helped break the game open. The junior guard led the Lions with 18 points.
“She really stepped up for us for sure,” Bacco added. “She is a player that we could always count on and she did not disappoint.”
Sam Kosmacki chipped in with 15 points while Kilgus finished with 11.
Although pleased with the win, Bacco said his squad did not quite play a complete game.
“We’re going to have to put together four full quarters for us to advance this time of year,” Bacco said. “We played a very good second half but need to put together two halves next game.”