City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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It might have been January 13 to the rest of the area, but inside Spring-Ford’s gymnasium on Monday night, it felt much more like late February or early March. 

A near-capacity crowd filled the 1,560-seat gym, two huge student sections representing Spring-Ford and archrival Perkiomen Valley, seats hard to come by even in the upper deck. None of it felt like the anticipation of a regular-season matchup, even though there’s three weeks left until the Pioneer Athletic Conference playoffs begin, much less the district and state tournaments that both teams plan on participating in.

“It was huge,” Spring-Ford junior Mac Pettinelli emphasized. “I think this was our biggest turnout, I think even bigger than PAC championships last year. We did a lot of work getting our students to come here.”

The first meeting this year between the Rams and the Vikings gave the home crowd plenty to cheer about, as Spring-Ford overcame a slow start to hand Perk Valley its first defeat of the year, 56-44, in a battle of the two top teams in the Pioneer Athletic Conference. There’s no doubt the Rams fed off the crowd, which responded with a roar to every shot, steal and rebound, bringing that playoff feel to a matchup expected to happen a few times more this season. 

“This was a phenomenal atmosphere tonight, kudos to our students for really getting out here and cheering, the community for getting out here,” Spring-Ford coach Mickey McDaniel said. “This is why I wish in our league we would separate boys and girls games, or play boys and girls doubleheaders. It was a great atmosphere at PV last night for the boys game, and then you come back here and it’s the same atmosphere. This is what it should be every game […] we fed on them without question, they were definitely the sixth man tonight.”

Spring-Ford (13-2, 4-1 PAC Liberty) bounced back from a couple rough shooting games last week in its first two losses of the season — to Methacton in league play and Friends’ Central out of it— by shooting 52% from the floor (23-of-44) with 16 assisted buckets, knocking down seven 3-pointers, getting at least six points from six of the seven girls who saw minutes in the win.

McDaniel was happy to see the return of the team which has scored some impressive non-league wins, including capturing their bracket of the Nike Tournament of Champions in Arizona in December, as well as beating the likes of St. Thomas Aquinas (N.J.) and Bullis School (Md.) just ahead of the new year.

“I hope right now it gets us back on track," he said. "The girls will tell you, we didn’t play with a lot of energy (against Methacton) until the last three minutes, and you can’t do that against Methacton or Perk Valley, you’ve got to come ready to play every night. We hope we understand when we play with that energy and play with that confidence, that good things can happen to us in every game we play.”

Anna Azzara led the way with 18 points, four rebounds and four assists, the 5-foot-8 junior guard knocking down a pair of 3-pointers and doing her usual rim-attacking act, slicing to the bucket off the bounce on several occasions. 

She was far from the Rams’ only source of offense.

Junior Katie Tiffan helped the Rams close strong, scoring nine of her 12 points in the fourth quarter as they made sure that Perk Valley’s 6-3 sophomore Quinn Boettinger couldn’t single-handedly pull her team back into it. Perk Valley scored 16 points in the fourth quarter, its most of any quarter, with Boettinger contributing 11 in the frame, but it never really made a run, Spring-Ford having an answer for every bucket. 

“We came out really strong,” Tiffan said, “and we knew how to put the game away.”

Lilly Brescia hit the back-breaker, a 3-pointer from the right wing off an Azzara feed with 2:19 left, making it 51-38. The sophomore guard finished with seven points and two assists, hitting all three shots she took, including a couple second-quarter layups. 

“They hit big shots, Lilly had a couple big drives and the big ‘3’,” McDaniel said. “When girls can play with that kind of confidence, it’s a great thing. It’s only going to help us as we move along.”

Pettinelli added seven points, seven rebounds, and four assists, coming up with several of the game’s biggest plays. After missing her first two shots, the 5-10 wing guard buried a mid-range jumper just ahead of the second quarter buzzer, getting the feed from Elizabethtown-bound post Megan Robbins (6 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists) to put Spring-Ford up 25-20 at the break.

“I’ve been working on (shooting in the last) couple seconds, have to put it up, so I thought it would be a better chance if I shot it,” she said, admitting: “I might have yelled at her to give me the ball.”

With a minute left in the third quarter, Spring-Ford’s lead at eight, Pettinelli crossed over a defender and hit a step-back 3-pointer from the top of the key. She wasn’t done there: with 0.5 seconds left in the third and Spring-Ford inbounding under its offensive basket, she found a cutting Azzara for a buzzer-beating layup to make it a 13-point edge going into the fourth.

“Me and Anna, since we’ve been playing together for so long, we have such a good connection, she gave me a little head-nod and I knew she was going to pull her [defender] up and bring her back,” Pettinelli said. “We called the play for Megan but I think we both knew that’s where the play was going to go.”

Boettinger finished with a game-high 22 points for Perkiomen Valley, the skilled post establishing position and finishing efficiently, knocking down a few mid-range jumpers to boot, with six rebounds, three assists, two steals and a block. But a talented Vikings lineup that starts five sophomores, including multiple Division I recruits, couldn’t consistently hit enough shots or force Spring-Ford into enough discomfort to overcome it. 

The two teams, which came into the night ranked No. 2 (PV) and No. 6 (SF) in the District 1 6A rankings, will meet again on Feb. 2 at Perkiomen Valley, the regular-season finale for both schools. It’s certainly likely they’ll meet again in the Pioneer Athletic Conference championship game, and it wouldn’t be shocking to see them meet in either the District 1 or PIAA Class 6A tournaments, if not both. Five meetings this season isn’t out of the question; three seems almost a certainty.

“Yeah, we know we’re going to play them a lot, so this proves that it could go either way, either night, whoever’s having a better night, maybe, shooting-wise,” Pettinelli said. “It’s good to get the first one under our belt.

“I think this really kind of brings us back up, because we also lost to Methacton last week, and I think a lot of us were doubting us against this game, PV’s the best in the PAC as of now. This boosts our confidence, lets us know that we really worked to get here. This is a big win for us.”

By Quarter
Perk Valley:    9   |  11  |   8   |  16  ||  44
Spring-Ford:   8   |  17  |  16  |  15  ||  56

Shooting
Perk Valley: 17-40 FG (2-8 3PT), 8-16 FT
Spring-Ford: 23-44 FG (7-18 3PT), 3-5 FT

Scoring
Perk Valley: Boettinger 22, Galbavy 7, L. Stein 7, Smith 3, E. Stein 4, Bacani 1

Spring-Ford: Azzara 18, K. Tiffin 12, Brescia 7, Pettinelli 7, Robbins 6, Miller 6