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Henderson girls down Coatesville, stay alive in Ches-Mont playoff race

01/31/2023, 11:15pm EST
By Joseph Santoliquito

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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COATESVILLE — Pressure? What pressure? West Chester Henderson girls’ basketball team quelled any notion of stress Tuesday night on the 25-minute bus ride to Coatesville. Instead of the pending PIAA District 1 Class 6A and Ches-Mont League playoff implications the game would have, their minds and quickly pressing fingers were more focused on the GamePigeon app game Crazy Eights.

Everyone won at least once. It eased the tension.

That’s the way Warriors’ coach Greta Neff wanted it: No talk about the pressure of winning a crucial game.


Henderson's Whitney Evans (L) and Jackie Shea each chipped in a dozen in the Warriors' big win Tuesday night. (Photo: Joseph Sanotliquito/CoBL)

The relaxed Warriors then went out and did what they were supposed to do, beating Coatesville, 32-30, behind team-high 12 points each from Whitney Evans and Jackie Shea.

The victory pushed Henderson to 12-7 overall and 6-4 in the Ches-Mont League National, while Coatesville, which would have clinched a Ches-Mont playoff berth, fell to 12-7 and 7-4 in the league.

The Red Raiders, who are No. 20 in the District 1 Class 6A unofficial rankings, conclude their regular season with three home games against Class 6A Norristown, Unionville and Avon Grove, which were a combined 25-28 entering Tuesday night; of that, only Avon Grove (7-11, 3-6) is in the Ches-Mont National.

Henderson, No. 18 in District 1 6A, sits a game behind Coatesville in the win column in the Ches-Mont National with games at Avon Grove (6A) and Phoenixville (5A) next, before concluding the season with Bishop Shanahan (5A), which is 10-0 in the Ches-Mont; the Warriors would have to hand the Eagles their first upset and/or hope that Coatesville loses to Avon Grove to still be in the Ches-Mont picture.

“This win puts us on a better track, but the pressure of the game isn’t something we talked about, because it’s just one game and our bigger eyes are on districts and we’ll see what happens there,” Neff said. “The girls showed a lot of guts tonight. Anytime you win a close game against a really good team that’s a good win for us. This is a tough place to play and each win seems to get bigger and bigger and for us string a couple together has been really nice for us.

“I give our kids a lot of credit, because they stayed disciplined, they stayed ready. A lot of games were tight games, and we’re still a young team trying to learn on the fly in putting distance from opponents during games.”

No more than six points separated the teams, with Coatesville holding 11-5 and 13-7 leads in the second quarter.

But something highly unusual started the game.

With slightly less than six minutes left in the opening quarter, Coatesville guard Sydney Butcher dribbled between halfcourt and the top of the key for about two minutes as Henderson sat back in a zone defense—and no one budged. Coatesville coach Tina Nicholson stubbornly instructed her team to stay put until Henderson came out of its zone and Neff stubbornly told her team to stay in the zone until Coatesville moved the ball.

A minute of this turned into two minutes, and then Butcher tucked the ball under her arm and waited another three minutes without anyone moving on the court.

The five-minute stall tactic whittled away the quarter into the final minute—when, ironically, Coatesville threw the ball out of bounds for a turnover. The Red Raiders took a 4-0 lead into the second quarter on four total shots, and Henderson was only able to get off one shot in the quarter.

“If we’re only down four points going into the fourth quarter, that’s not a bad position to be in,” Neff said. “I give our kid a lot of credit. It was only a four-point lead. If it was the fourth quarter and it was a 10-point lead, it would be a different story.”

Trailing 28-25, Henderson’s Evans nailed a big 3-pointer to tie it with 5:30 to play, and Shea then followed a few minutes later with a go-ahead score that Henderson would not relinquish.

“We knew there was a lot of tension between [us] and we just went out and played,” Evans said. “This was big for us. I’m 17 and started basketball when I was five, but I never experienced anything like that first quarter. We were all standing around. It was only 4-0.

“We needed this to save our Ches-Mont spot. We had fun on the bus ride over.”

Shea confirmed that.

“We knew we were competing for the same spot in the Ches-Mont, so it definitely was a big surreal moment for us to just win,” the 5-foot-10 junior said. “Going into it, we didn’t want to add pressure to the situation. We were playing games on our phones coming over here. Everyone won at least once.

“It was a team effort.”

It was.

Lilli Bertrando, who took only one shot before the fourth quarter, nailed two big free throws that proved to be the winning difference with 28 seconds left in the game.

Coatesville, which was led by Serenity Burgess’ 16 and Dejah Morris’ 10, shot a collective 2 of 13 in the fourth quarter and suffered some costly turnovers during some critical moments.

“We had good momentum early in the game and what we did in the first quarter we never did before,” Morris said. “We wanted to get them out of their defense in the first quarter, and we needed to make better passes. We made passes that were too risky and they were on it and thy got fastbreaks off of that.

“We knew if we won tonight, we would have clinched a playoff spot. I still believe we’ll make the Ches-Mont final four and do what we need to do.”

By Quarter
Henderson:  0   |  14  |   9   |   9   ||  32
Coatesville:  4   |   9   |  13  |   4   ||  30

Scoring
Henderson: Whitney Evans 12, Jackie Shea 12, Bailey Schalleur 6, Lilli Bertrando 2.

Coatesville: Serenity Burgess 16, Dejah Morris 10, Kaitlyn Ward 4.

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.


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