City of Basketball Love

Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3)
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BENSALEM >> Try. Fail. Learn. Execute.

Three times this season, Strath Haven had tried to beat Radnor and three times, the Panthers failed. Three times, they’d learned from their losses, even if it didn’t show up in the score the next time they faced the Raptors. They’d tried, they’d failed and they learned, so facing a nine-point deficit midway through the fourth quarter Wednesday night, it was time to execute.

Living by its four-word mantra, Strath Haven authored an incredible comeback to defeat Radnor 53-44 in overtime in the second round of the PIAA Class 5A girls basketball playoffs.

“Our coach had the mantra of first you try, you fail, then you learn and last you execute and we took that with us,” Strath Haven senior Olivia Voshell said. “We really locked in on everything she wrote on the board, tried to stick to the little things and really just stay focused.”

Radnor led 39-30 when Anna Reger sank a free throw with 3:47 left in regulation. Strath Haven closed the game on a 23-5 run with every point coming from Voshell, Maryella Gill and Maddie Fanning, erasing the nine-point deficit to force overtime then never trailing in the extra frame.

Fanning, the 5-foot fireball of a freshman, led Strath Haven with 22 points. Her performance down the stretch included a banked-in, and-one three-pointer early in the big run and the tying basket, which saw the guard come up with a steal, have the ball tipped on her way to the rim and then finish with a runner that kissed the glass before dropping it to make it 41-41 with 44 seconds left.

“You look up at the scoreboard and see you’re down nine points, that can really get to some people but this team, we’ve been through this, we’ve been down before,” Fanning said. “It’s all mental at that point, we just have to keep going, stay consistent and eventually, we’ll get it back.”

The four-word edict was Panthers coach Brandi Johnson’s way of keeping her team focused on the game at hand and not the previous three losses to Radnor, the first one close but the latter two not so much. She threw a new wrinkle in defensively, eschewing the zone used in the first three meetings and going man-to-man but mostly chalked it up to her players collectively wanting to win.

Voshell said that as far as anyone in the program knew, Strath Haven hadn’t made states since 1992, so this run was already an accomplishment. However, Johnson knew her players didn’t just want a piece and urged them to go after “the whole cake.”

“This was like a championship game for us,” Johnson said. “I told them ‘we didn’t get to the Central League playoffs, they won the District 1 title, now it’s just us and them left, so this is your real championship game,’ and they took it to heart.”

Strath Haven’s energy never dropped. The Panthers jumped all over Radnor early, putting the District 1 champions into a 9-2 hole in the first quarter and while the Raptors closed the first quarter on a 7-0 run, Strath Haven didn’t stop.

They took a lead into halftime at 20-18, then weathered what turned out to be Radnor’s big run as Reger and Nyah Yao combined on  a 16-0 run that bridged the third and fourth quarters. Voshell scored a bucket to break up that run before Fanning split a pair at the line but when Reger answered with a steal before going 1-of-2 at the stripe on the following possession, it was still Radnor up nine with less than four minutes to play.

Sometimes, basketball rewards players simply for playing hard and that seemed to be the case as Strath Haven started its run. Voshell drove, scored and got fouled for an and-one to start it, then Fanning got fouled shooting a three, which banked in and gave her a four-point play when the foul shot went down.

“That kind of shows what happens when you keep playing hard even when things aren’t going your way,” Voshell, a TCNJ commit, said. “In the first half, we started off strong but there were definitely some plays where things didn’t go our way. Either shots we thought that looked good and didn’t fall or stops that we thought were right there and they got one more pass for a good take.

“When you stay together and keep your head, I think it shows what happens and that things really will end up going your way.”

The loss ended what turned into a pretty strong season for a Radnor team that didn’t know what to expect for itself. A state qualifier last year, the Raptors only had one senior on this year’s roster in Riley d’Entremont and a host of young players that would need to step up around Reger and Yao as the returning starters.

Yao led all scorers with 26 points while Reger had 13, but the rest of the team accounted for just five points, a departure from the balance and secondary scoring the Raptors had gotten in the district playoffs.

“They just out-played us, they got every loose ball and really hustled, a couple crazy shots there that went in but at the end, they out-played us,” Radnor coach Rob Baxter said.

Radnor won its first district title since 2014 and with all but one player slated to return, there’s a good foundation in place for next season.

“I hope they believe in that,” Baxter said. “The expectations will ante up for us a little bit.”

It was fitting that Gill and Voshell, the seniors, were at the heart of the Panthers’ run. Voshell, who is relentlessly upbeat, a couple of times urged her team to “take a breath” after a frantic moment like a turnover, rushed shot or defensive breakdown and Johnson lauded the pair for pouring their energy into their young teammates all season.

“From the beginning of the season, I said we’re going to be stuck together, so you’re sisters,” Johnson said. “If she’s not in the right place, tell her and don’t listen to the tone, listen to what’s being said. That carried through.”

Kenzie Fanning, Maddie’s twin sister, only had two points but her energy was just as palpable as her sister’s and the Strath Haven bench just kept getting fired up with every big play. Voshell pointed to the twins, who both played prominent roles on Strath Haven’s PIAA Class 3A championship soccer team, as already having that big game experience.

So it didn’t seem to deter Maddie Fanning on that semi-chaotic sequence that saw her tie the game late in the fourth quarter.

“They have it in their heads and we all have in our heads that they won the first three games,” Fanning said. “You gotta just wash that out and keep moving forward. We all realized if we came together, we were going to be fine.”

Voshell started overtime off with a driving, twisting layup and her team never looked back. The Panthers held Radnor scoreless over the final 2:20 of regulation and the first 3:56 of the overtime, having turned a nine-point deficit into a 10-point lead in that span.

The senior, who scored her team’s final points, described the postgame sensation in the locker room as “unreal.” The Panthers will have another difficult test on Saturday when they face District 2 champion Crestwood, a 52-45 winner over Friere Charter, in the quarterfinals.

The Comets have a sizable frontline and are on a historic run of their own but Strath Haven will show up ready to compete.

“At the start of the year, we all knew we had something special,” Voshell said. “We’d really lacked having kids that wanted to be here, kids whose main sport this was and kids who aren’t just talking about other things at practice, this team wants to stay focused and wants to work hard.

“This just shows how rewarding that can be.”

By Quarter

STRATH HAVEN 9 | 11 | 7 | 14 | 12 || 53

RADNOR 9 | 9 | 10 | 13 | 3 || 44

Scoring

SH: Maddie Fanning 22, Olivia Voshell 16, Maryella Gill 11, Ellie O’Connor 2, Kenzie Fanning 2

R: Nyah Yao 26, Anna Reger 13, Caroline Quinn 2, Julia Richardson 2, Riley d’Entremont 1

~~~
ARCHBISHOP WOOD 58, VILLA MARIA ACADEMY 32

This time last year, Emma Seckinger would have been happy with any opportunity she was given.

As a freshman, the wing was on the tail end of Archbishop Wood’s playoff rotation as the Vikings won their fourth straight PIAA title, getting some minutes here and there if the Vikings were up big. This year, as a sophomore, Seckinger finds herself right in the middle of things from the tap as part of Wood’s starting lineup.

Seckinger and Wood kept their march toward a fifth straight PIAA title rolling Wednesday, its defense setting the tone in a 58-32 second round win over Villa Maria Academy.

“I’ve been working hard in practice and putting in more time outside of the gym but just having my team there has helped me a lot,” Seckinger said. “They’ve been really supporting me along the way and we’ve built our chemistry from that.”

Seckinger came into the season plenty confident after playing a key role on the Lady Runnin’ Rebels 15U HGSL championship team this summer. That, coupled with a strong offseason playing with Wood even led to her first Division I offer from Robert Morris.

As the season began, Seckinger was still coming off the bench but already a top reserve for coach Mike McDonald. When junior Colleen Besachio went down for the season with an injury, Seckinger moved into the first five and has steadily settled in.

“It boosted my confidence and gave me more motivation coming back here,” Seckinger said. “Knowing I could take on a bigger role, that really motivated me.”

McDonald has liked what he’s seen as well. The 5-foot-10 Seckinger is a good athlete, she can play on the wing or in the high post, she can shoot the ball reliably and is at her best going downhill attacking the rim.

Of course, it all starts defensively for the Vikings and Seckinger is developing good habits on that side of the ball too. With guard Ryan Carter usually able to cause havoc in her matchup, the sophomore playing strong defense on VMA standout Sophia Tray on Wednesday, Seckinger has played well as the next defender in line.

“Our defensive rotations have been really good too, I thought we did that nicely in the second quarter,” McDonald said. “Any time we did go for a gamble and missed, I thought Emma Seckinger seemed to be the kid in the right spot helping so we weren’t giving up layups.”

Carter led Wood with 20 points, the sophomore now has 41 points in two state playoff games while Emily Knouse had 11 points and four assists, three of those helpers going to first quarter three-pointers before she splashed a longball of her own at the buzzer.

Seckinger had seven points as the next highest scorer for Wood, the Vikings using 11 players in what became a running clock in the second half.

“It starts with getting more reps and just being confident in that,” Seckinger said. “Knowing we all can have a bigger role and contribute more, we have all been building off of that knowing we’re going to have to step up when the players ahead of us are gone.”

Villa Maria Academy knew it was up against a difficult task in trying to slow Wood’s quest for a fifth straight state title. The Vikings defense had the Hurricanes sped up in the first half, VMA making a nice pass here only for the receiver to fumble the ball or found an open look only for the shooter to rush it, but they stayed lively throughout.

Hurricanes coach Kathy McCartney had nothing but praise for her two seniors, Abby Ferry and Sierra Dean, who got to finish out their careers with an AACA championship. Tray finished with a team-high 15 points, the junior giving the VMA fans a reason to cheer when she beat the third quarter buzzer on a long three.

“We battled in that second half, we challenged them at halftime and they answered, they’re just a really fun group to coach,” McCartney said. “Abby and Sierra did a great job leading us, along with our other captain Sophia Tray, it wasn’t always an easy job for them with all the youth but they all did a great job.”

Wood moves on to face Bethlehem Catholic, a 53-38 winner over Gwynedd Mercy Academy, in Saturday’s quarterfinal round. The teams met in last year’s semifinals and while the casts are different on both sides, McDonald noted the Hawks still present a tough challenge with their talented young players.

It’s Wood’s 12th straight year making the quarterfinal round and overall, Wednesday marked the Vikings’ 22nd consecutive PIAA tournament win, tying a state girls’ record. The streak started during the 2019-20 season that was cut short by Covid-19, continued through the team’s four consecutive state titles and into this playoff run.

“It’s part of our process in our program, you get through this run and maybe you’re not playing the minutes you hoped for as a freshman or sophomore but you’ve been through it now,” McDonald said. “By the time you are ready to play, you’ve seen it, so the nerves are over in that way and you come in and play with more confidence.”

By Quarter

ARCHBISHOP WOOD 25 |15 | 7 | 11 || 58

VILLA MARIA ACADEMY 9 | 4 | 12 | 7 || 32

Scoring

AW: Ryan Carter 20, Emily Knouse 11, Emma Seckinger 7, Sophia Topakas 4, Sophia McDonald 6, Makayla Finnegan 3, Casey Thompson 2, Addison Payne 2, Regan Przepioski 2, Mackenzie Rogers 1

VMA: Sophia Tray 15, Ava Broadhurst 4, Abby Ferry 3, Briella Romeo 2, Rebecca Croft 2, Erin Urbanski 2, Anna Vickers 2, Sophia Iacone 2