No slowing down: Trinity punches gas, ticket to title game with win over Woodland Hills
Celebration
Luke Campbell/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Riley DeRubbo, left, and Kaylin Venick celebrate after defeating Woodland Hills, 50-33, in a WPIAL Class 5A semifinal game Wednesday night at Mt. Lebanon High School.
Luke Campbell/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Kaylin Venick goes up for a layup right before the first-half buzzer sounds in a WPIAL Class 5A semifinal game Wednesday night at Mt. Lebanon High School.
Luke Campbell/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Ashley Durig dribbles past the outreached arm of Woodland Hills’ Jazmine Dunn during the second half of Wednesday’s WPIAL Class 5A semifinal game at Mt. Lebanon High School.
Luke Campbell/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Riley DeRubbo attempts a contested layup from Woodland Hills’ Kayla Walter in the first half of a WPIAL Class 5A semifinal game Wednesday night at Mt. Lebanon High School.
Luke Campbell/Observer-Reporter
Trinity’s Riley DeRubbo drives past a pair of defenders for Woodland Hills for an eventual layup in the second half of a WPIAL Class 5A semifinal game Wednesday night at Mt. Lebanon High School.
PITTSBURGH – The Trinity girls basketball team knew their up-tempo style of play would work.
Woodland Hills coach Theron Pitts was not a believer.
“We thought that with our athleticism we could match theirs and overtake them,” Pitts said.
From late in the second quarter until the final buzzer, all Pitts could do was watch it snowball right in front of his eyes. Controlling the pace in the final two-and-a-half quarters, No. 3 Trinity ran past, through and over second-seeded Woodland Hills en route to the Petersen Events Center with a 50-33 win in a WPIAL Class 5A semifinal game at Mt. Lebanon High School.
“They laid it on us,” Pitts said. “Apparently, they were a lot stronger than we anticipated. Those girls are put together. They are solid one through seven. They outmuscled us.”
Now, Trinity (19-4) will set it sights on two things it has been chasing: a WPIAL title and top-seeded Chartiers Valley. The section rivals will meet in the final at 3 p.m. Saturday. The Colts remained undefeated with a convincing 65-43 win over Thomas Jefferson in the nightcap at Mt. Lebanon.
It will be Trinity’s first WPIAL title appearance since losing to South Fayette in 2016.
The momentum shifted away from Woodland Hills (19-5) when Ashley Durig came off the bench early in the second quarter. Durig made back-to-back layups to spark the Hillers’ struggling offense.
Getting away from a half-court, slow-paced game, Trinity began to run and never looked back. Riley DeRubbo made a layup to trim the Hillers’ deficit to one point for the third time in the second quarter. A Courtney Dahlquist floater and a pair of Kaylin Venick layups, including one as the first-half buzzer sounded, ended an eight-point run and gave Trinity a 19-14 halftime lead.
“We took that 8-0 run and things just started to go our way,” Trinity coach Kathy McConnell-Miller said. “Woodland Hills came out and delivered a big punch. I felt like they controlled the tempo in the first quarter. The second punch definitely made the hardest impact. We responded. We then felt confident that we could control the game.”
Trinity was in complete control the rest of the way.
Durig, similar to the impact she made in the first half, helped the Hillers pull away to start the third quarter. She scored on back-to-back possessions – four of her eight points – to extend the lead to double digits, 26-16, with 5:30 remaining in the third.
“I’m just glad to help out in any way I can,” Durig said. “I think once we get going we are unstoppable. If I’m able to create that spark then that’s great. After how we ended the first half, we were excited to start the second.”
Durig embraced the dirty work of scrapping for lose basketballs and fighting for rebounds, which helped lead to opportunities for both DeRubbo and Dahlquist to score.
“This coaching staff and team has never taken for granted what Ashley brings to this team,” McConnell-Miller said. “She is our sixth starter. She has always been somebody that brings so much off the bench. There are players that go a lifetime and can’t do what she does off the bench. It’s a craft. It’s something special she has. We always feel like we’re going to get a lift when she comes into the game.”
DeRubbo finished with a game-high 18 points and Dahlquist added 10.
“Playing fast is how we like to play,” DeRubbo said. “We just stuck with it during that spurt early on where we didn’t score. We just kept pushing each other. We knew we were better.”
The closest Woodland Hills would come to threatening a comeback attempt was when Peyton Pinkney made an off-balance layup to trim the deficit to 28-24 with 3:37 left in the third quarter.
Pinkney was forced to be more of a presence inside after Joi Burleigh, who led the Wolverines with 11 points, got into foul trouble in the second half.
“We became individuals,” Pitts said. “We were successful in the first quarter but stopped doing the things that got us the lead. We stopped playing defense, started worrying about the officiating and didn’t get the ball inside. We didn’t cut out passing lanes, we didn’t switch (on defense) and we forgot our assignments. We didn’t execute.”
Woodland Hills forced Trinity into a half-court offense throughout the entirety of the first quarter. The Hillers didn’t score until 3:13 was left and trailed 10-7 after the first quarter.
“I’m so happy for this group of players,” McConnell-Miller said. “The look on their faces at the end of the game was worth every minute of the process, the decision-making, the practices and the late-night film sessions. It was worth everything.”