City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@jsantoliquito)
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Mary O’Brien remembers it well. The Marple Newtown junior guard lived through all of the Senior Nights her freshman year. O’Brien recalls specifically the time the Tigers visited Springfield when the school was awarding its state championship rings to its lacrosse team.

That’s where the Tigers were—the team under the welcome mat that opposing teams could shovel out for special occasions and guaranteed victories.

O’Brien, a three-year starting guard, had been waiting three years for this. The Marple Newtown girls’ basketball community more than doubled that time, stretching back to 2015—that’s the last time the Tigers beat perennial Central League powerhouse Springfield (Delco).That long wait ended on Saturday afternoon in a raucous, rousing Springfield gym, where Marple Newtown dealt the two-time defending PIAA District 1 Class 5A champs and defending Central League champs a 45-40 overtime defeat in the Central League semifinals.

The Tigers (17-5) advance to the Central League championship, where they will play Garnet Valley at 6 PM Monday at Ridley High School in a boy-girl doubleheader, followed by the boys Central League championship at 7:45 PM.

Marple Newtown received great balance, led by Nikki Mostardi's game-high 15 points, followed by 10 points each from O'Brien, Haley Levy and Brooke Impriano.

Springfield got a team-high 14 from Kaitlyn Kearney in a great back-and-forth game that certainly fell under the category where neither team deserved to lose.

There were 11 lead changes and the largest difference between them came in the final 45-40 tally.

But there was something a little deeper boiling on the Marple Newtown side that kept the Tigers resilient.

“We never beat them, since I was a freshman, and I do remember being everyone’s senior nights, I remember all of it, and things turned around once we got Nikki,” said O’Brien, whose four free throws in the last 32 seconds of overtime sealed the win. “I missed a lot of my foul shots in the beginning of the game, and I kept thinking to make the next one, make the next one.

“We’ve been through games when we stepped on the pedal early and blew it in the end. We knew if we could win this game, we could win it all. We’ve been working for this all season.”

Mostardi, who transferred in from Archbishop Carroll her junior year, started strong and ended strong. She was the only one scoring in the first quarter and closed out her scoring with three points to give Marple Newtown the lead to begin overtime.

“This was the game we were playing for all season,” Mostardi said. “We lost to them by six here when we didn’t have Haley (Levy) and lost to them by one at home. I remember our athletic director (Chris Gicking) told us after the game that we lost the battle, but we didn’t lose the war.”

Mostardi admitted the Tigers made things a little tough on themselves missing three free throws in the last 41 seconds of regulation, while Springfield’s Taylor Hunyet nailed two clutch free throws to send it into overtime.

“This was a heck of a basketball game between two good teams, and they battled it out for four quarters,” said Springfield coach Ky McNichol, who’s done a fabulous job in building the Springfield program and getting the Cougars this far without star player Lexi Aaron, who injured her knee and was lost for the year five games into the season. “I think they made one more shot than we did in the end—and then we had to foul.

“We can still defend the district title. I’m well aware that it was a long time since Marple Newtown beat Springfield. I’m well aware it goes back to 2015, but every time my kids looked like they were down and out, we came back. Taylor Hunyet made two major foul shots to set the game into overtime.

“These kids have all stepped up with Lexi being a support system off the bench. I couldn’t be prouder of how these girls played. We’re done. We have the district playoffs ahead.”

Marple Newtown continues. The Tigers have a lot of blank space since the last time they won a girls’ basketball Central League championship. It goes way, way back to 1980.

“We’re going to act like nothing happened, because we still have a lot to prepare,” Mostardi said.

O’Brien doubled down on that sentiment, saying “We just said in the locker room that this isn’t our Super Bowl. We haven’t won anything yet.”

By Quarter

Marple Newtown: 10 | 8 | 12 | 6 | 9 || 45
Springfield:             8 | 9 | 12 | 7 | 4 || 40

Scoring

Marple Newtown: Nikki Mostardi 15, Mary O’Brien 10, Haley Levy 10, Brooke Impriano 10
Springfield: Kaitlyn Kearney 14, Anabel Kreydt 9, Mia Valerio 8, Taylor Hunyet 8

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on Twitter here.