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Archbishop Wood wins defensive PCL battle with Archbishop Carroll

01/20/2023, 10:00pm EST
By Andrew Robinson

Andrew Robinson (@ADrobinson3)

RADNOR — Delaney Finnegan’s work is seemingly never done.

Friday night, as if keeping pace with one of the Catholic League’s most energetic and talented players in Archbishop Carroll junior Brooke Wilson wasn’t enough, Finnegan’s shooting was an outlet for her Archbishop Wood teammates. As if all that wasn’t enough, there was the senior herding a few of her young cousins out of the Vikings’ locker room at the end of the game with none of them eager to let go of her.

Finnegan’s outside shooting and defense, paired with good team-wide ball movement, helped Wood top the host Patriots 34-20 in a low-scoring but vital PCL game among two league leaders.

“They were probably the good luck charm I’ve never had,” Finnegan said after ushering her cousins back upstairs to Carroll’s main lobby. “We didn’t let (Carroll) shut us down. We did a good job moving the ball, which, that’s just a big thing we do naturally as a team of being unselfish and we always look for the extra pass and wait to get good shots.”


Archbishop Wood's Emily Knouse, left, and Delaney Finnegan helped the Vikings to Friday's win. (Photo: Andrew Robinson/CoBL)

The Patriots have shown an ability to play Wood extremely close pretty much every time they meet and last year, it was Carroll authoring a fourth-quarter rally to stun the Vikings in their own gym. Finnegan and sophomore Emily Knouse both readily admitted that game was fresh on their minds going into Friday’s clash, the beginning of an important stretch of PCL games.

Knouse and Finnegan connected on back-to-back threes, both assisted by Deja Evans, for an early 6-2 lead before Brooke and Taylor Wilson tied it 6-6 midway through the first. Lauren Tretter and Alexia Windish then hit back-to-back threes of their own for a 12-6 Wood lead with 2:29 left in the quarter.

For a spell, it seemed like another vintage meeting that would come down to the last few possessions was on tap. Then everything went cold, with neither team scoring again until Knouse found Evans with 3:48 to play in the second quarter.

“It was definitely frustrating, a low-scoring game for the both of us, but we just stuck to what we know and getting good shots and one extra pass,” said Knouse, who scored six points and assisted three baskets. “That extra pass can get you a wide-open layup, things like that. It was definitely frustrating, but I think that’s what motivated us to keep trying harder to get good things going.”

Carroll, for most of the night, simply couldn’t buy a basket. The Patriots shot 9-of-38 overall from the floor and while some of that was due to Wood’s defense, there were some quality looks that didn’t go down.

Wood coach Mike McDonald pointed to a couple breakdowns that his team survived but overall, felt the Vikings’ defense was up to task. Finnegan helped hold Brooke Wilson to just six points and while the Patriots junior had seven boards, she didn’t cause the usual havoc she creates with her energy on both ends of the floor.

Even Evans, the 6-foot-2 post presence, was out on the perimeter sticking with guards and even getting a block on a drive in the fourth quarter for her efforts.

“We have seven seniors, so a lot of them have been through this before against an Archbishop Carroll team but we know coming in how well they’re going to defend so we know how precious every possession is,” McDonald said. “If you don’t defend and rebound against them, they’re going to get easy baskets and down the other end, we know it’s going to be really tough.”

Wood didn’t exactly light it up offensively either, shooting 12-of-34 overall, so every basket felt a little more important. Windish was a spark with six first half-points, her and-one late in the second giving Wood the frame 7-0 and the visitors a 19-6 halftime edge.

Taylor Wilson came into the game in striking range of her 1,000th point and the senior West Point commit tried to spark some life into the Patriots’ offense in the third quarter. A putback by the forward with 7:05 left in the frame snapped the drought and kicked off a 9-3 run that ended with Wilson sinking a left wing three for the milestone point and clipping Wood’s lead to 23-16.

Knouse, who had found Finnegan for a three earlier in the quarter, did so again out of the timeout to celebrate Wilson’s accomplishment with the Vikings senior connecting from the far corner. Practically every time she touched the ball, her personal fan section let out an enthusiastic “Delaney!” and they were very excited to see the three go down.

“We didn’t want to let it faze us or throw us off our game,” Finnegan, who matched Wilson with a game-high 11 points, said. “We just stayed focused.”

Knouse added a side-step three to start the fourth quarter, the last of seven long-range hits for Wood in the game. The sophomore had eight rebounds, tied with Ava Renninger for the team lead while Evans finished with six points, six rebounds and two assists despite rolling her ankle in the first quarter.

“We’re going to play as a team and as long as we do that as the season goes on, we hope one person here and there is able to chip in and help,” McDonald said. “Emily’s always going to do a good job passing and Delaney, tonight, it was on both ends of the floor. She hit some huge shots and did her normal stuff on the defensive end, that’s just what she does and to get the 11 points on the other end was astronomical for us.”

Wood’s played an extremely challenging slate to this point, but with a home game against Cardinal O’Hara and a Neumann-Goretti team playing with a lot of confidence as of its next three PCL games, Friday’s game held a little more significance.

“Last year, we lost to them at home and that really sucked,” Knouse said. “A win like this, it should boost our confidence even more from how we had been playing and push us even more.”

By Quarter
Archbishop Wood:  12  |   7   |   8   |   7   ||  34
Archbishop Carroll:  6   |   0   |  10  |   4   ||  20

Scoring
AW: Delaney Finnegan 11, Deja Evans 6, Emily Knouse 6, Alexa Windish 6, Laren Tretter 3, Kara Meredith 2

AC: Taylor Wilson 11, Brooke Wilson 6, Alexis Eberz 3


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