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Abington withstands Woods' run, advances to District 1 AAAA final

02/25/2015, 3:15pm EST

By Tom Reifsnyder

Amir Hinton (above) led all scorers with 26 points as the Ghosts galloped past Pennsbury on Wednesday night. (Josh Einbinder-Schatz)

Tom Reifsnyder (@tom_reifsnyder)
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When a monster Pennsbury third-quarter run, powered by 16 points from Derrick Woods, erased a 12-point Abington halftime lead, it looked like Wednesday’s first District 1 AAAA semifinal would be a classic tale of two halves.

But Woods, who scored zero points in the first half, would score just one point in the fourth quarter as Amir Hinton and the Galloping Ghosts finished what they started, knocking off Pennsbury at Temple University's Liacouras Center, 49-40, and advancing to their first District 1 final in 29 years.

Hinton played the role of starter and closer for Abington as the senior guard followed up his 14 first half points with nine in the final quarter, finishing with a game-high of 25 and 10 rebounds to boot.

“He’s a leader, he knew how big this game was,” Abington head coach Charles Grasty said. “They wanted to play on Friday night, we’ve been down here before, Matt [Penecale] has played down here before, Amir was a sophomore down here, he was on the bench a little bit, but he went through the experience.

“He wanted a championship, we wanted to reach our goals. He stepped up.”

While Hinton was the clear go-to guy, Penecale, a fellow senior, made countless plays that didn’t necessarily end up on the stat sheet.

Penecale was tasked with defending Pennsbury’s Cameron Jones, a dynamic senior guard who put up 25 points against Methacton in the Falcons’ previous game.

“It’s not because of the lack of shots, he got his looks, they just didn’t fall,” Grasty said of Jones. “But Matt takes all these games personally.

“He feels like he’s getting overlooked, but he talks about it, he wants to come out and keep playing against all the competition that comes his way and he wants to try to do his best and show everybody out there that he’s a high-level player.”

Jones, who finished with just nine points, looked totally out of rhythm thanks to the relentless defensive pressure of Penecale; especially in the first half, in which Jones scored only three.

A look of frustration seemed to be permanently planted on Pennsbury head coach Bill Coleman's face for the entirety of the first half, which resulted in just 12 points for his team.

“We were really looking just for ourselves in that first half,” Coleman said. “If you look at Cam’s threes, they’re all off penetration, kickouts.

“That first half was brutal. You guys saw that.”

Coleman’s demeanor would take a turn for the better in the second half as the Falcons shook of their rough first half and absolutely exploded for a 15-2 run to start the third quarter.

Woods, who looked ineffective as ever on the low post in the first half, dominated the undersized Ghosts, scoring 16 points highlighted by a ferocious lefty dunk and three separate ‘and-1′ opportunities. The St. Bonaventure-bound senior forward would finish with a game-high 16 rebounds.

So what exactly were Coleman’s words of wisdom that ignited such an inspired run?

“Execute; simple as that,” Coleman said. “Just execute. We know what we have to do; just do it.”

The Falcons certainly acted on Coleman's message in the third quarter, but the fourth was a completely different story; one similar to the first half.

Even after being completely outplayed in the third, the Ghosts never batted an eyelash.

“We told them they were going to make a run, and they knew that they were going to have to sustain it,” Grasty said of Pennsbury’s third quarter run. “We feel like sometimes we make a run, they get to the bench, they’re excited, they get settled down, their coach gets to put in something, so we want our guys to just keep playing and keep fighting through it.”

Penecale, who scored a single point in the first half, amped up his aggressiveness in the final frame and scored six of his nine points while also adding three assists to steady the Abington offense.

Fittingly, Hinton finished off the Falcons with a pair from the charity stripe; the senior knocked down a game-high 10 free throws on 12 attempts.

Wednesday’s win marks the Ghosts’ fourth of this season over Pennsbury, not to mention nine consecutive overall.

“It’s tough to beat Pennsbury two times in a season, that’s what the guys were saying in the locker room, it’s tough to beat them three times, tough to beat them four times,” Grasty said after the game. “We try to throw all those games out that were in the past, focus on tonight’s game, forget about four in a row or eight in a row, we didn’t care about that.

“We wanted to focus on tonight’s game.”

Grasty and the Ghosts will take on Plymouth Whitemarsh in the District 1 AAAA final at Temple on Friday, Feb. 27