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Defense saves day for Peters Twp. in win over Wash High

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McMURRAY – A basketball masterpiece this was not.

The first quarter of Friday night’s nightcap of the Peters Township Holiday Basketball Tournament saw the host Indians and the Washington Prexies set offensive basketball back generations. It was bad enough to see the Prexies get shut out in the opening stanza. Peters Township was not much better, scoring a mere eight points, but it was enough to set the tone for a 47-33 Indians win.

“That was ugly, for sure,” Peters Township coach Gary Goga said. “Not much more to say than that.”

Goga was pleased that the Indians did play stellar defense, but added his team’s 8-for-35 shooting from behind the three-point line is a concern.

“We’ll come in (Saturday) for about an hour and get some shots up,” Goga added. “Normally, we are a better shooting team than that.”

Thomas Melonja and Sean Werner paced the Indians (7-2) with 12 points each. All 12 of Werner’s points came in the second half to help Peters Township blow open a somewhat close contest at the half when the Indians held a 22-11 lead.

Dax Ploskina chipped in with 10 points for the Indians to help balance the scoring load.

Dan Ethridge and Zahmere Robinson scored 13 and 11 points, respectively, for the Prexies (3-3). Only four players scored for Washington.

“We had a lot of good looks and got a lot of shots that we wanted,” Prexies coach Ron Faust said. “We have to execute and do a much better job of simply putting the ball in the basket.”

Faust lamented that the Prexies did get 33 shots inside the lane, but was only able to score 33 points, an incredible statistic that left the longtime coach somewhat perplexed.

“That just should not happen,” he said shaking his head.

The Prexies were without injured guard Joe Mercer, who hurt his ankle in the previous night’s loss to Upper St. Clair. Though the steady Mercer was not available, Faust believes the Prexies can still do a much better job taking care of the ball.

“We have the players in this locker room who can get the job done,” Faust noted. “Guys just need to step up and do their jobs.”

Washington committed 19 turnovers.

As for the Indians, Goga said he was pleased the Indians did a fine job defensively and on the glass as they outrebounded the Prexies 31-23.

“They do a real good job on hitting the offensive boards, but we were solid in limiting them,” Goga said. “We were able to clean up some of our messes as well on the offensive end by getting on the boards.”

Upper St. Clair 69, South Fayette 52: Peters Township’s neighbor and rival Upper St. Clair earned a 69-52 win over a scrappy South Fayette squad in the early game.

The Panthers (10-0) received strong performances from Tanner Gensler (23 points), Chris Pantelis (14 points), Ben Sandusky (12 points) and Andrew Casey (10 points).

South Fayette (3-4) was paced by Connor Mislan and Kade St. Ledger as each scored 10 points.

The same press defense that turned Washington over 25 times Thursday evening forced 23 Lions turnovers, many of which led to easy baskets in transition that coach Dave Mislan’s group could not overcome.

“We knew the press was coming and we still didn’t do a good job dealing with it,” Mislan said. “That’s something we will need to work on going forward.”

Upper St. Clair roared out of the gates as they carried a 16-5 lead at the end of the first quarter and never looked back. The Panthers spent much of the night carving the Lions up with pinpoint interior passing that led to easy inside buckets for Gensler, Pantelis and Casey.

“That is our game and what we try to do,” Panthers coach Danny Holzer said. “We look to get turnovers and scores. We wanted to come out strong and set the tone tonight and I think we did.”

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