Home → Sports ( March 29, 2023 )
Mountain View's most successful girls' basketball season ever came down to the wildest final second of this year's Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association tournament.
The Lady Eagles just missed becoming the first Susquehanna County team to reach a PIAA state girls' basketball final when Paityn Moyer hit a foul-line jumper that went through with a fraction of a second remaining, lifting Shamokin Lourdes Regional to a 34-33 victory March 21 at the Berwick Middle School.
Lourdes held the ball for more than 30 seconds, setting up Moyer's winning shot to break a 32-32 tie, but the story just begins there.
As Lourdes fans and players rushed onto the court to celebrate the dramatic victory with the clock showing zeroes and the horn having sounded, they learned they could not yet book their trip to Hershey for the state final.
Officials ruled that there was still time remaining, putting four-tenths of a second back on the clock and charging Lourdes with a technical foul for the people on the court delaying the game.
Mountain View freshman Addison Kilmer was sent to the line to shoot the two technical free throws.
Kilmer made the first, but the second bounced off the rim.
Mountain View's final in-bounds pass did not connect and Lourdes had its victory.
Lourdes (22-8) made it to the final for the fifth time where it lost to Union Area, 46-29, at The Giant Center.
Kilmer had a double-double in the second quarter alone on her way to 17 points and 23 rebounds.
Lourdes led most of the game, including 23-15 midway through the third quarter.
The Lady Eagles rallied to tie the game at 29-29 on a Vanessa Harvey free throw with 3:12 left.
Claire Getz played a big role in the comeback, including hitting the team's only 3-pointer to give Mountain View a 32-31 lead with 2:20 remaining.
Mountain View finished its first District 2 championship season at 21-7.
MILL HALL – Montrose also had its girls' basketball season end in the state semifinals, but in a different type of game.
The Lady Meteors were continually frustrated offensively, first in getting the ball past a trapping defense as they reached midcourt, then in trying to convert shots in the lane against 6-foot center Molly Kosmack.
Kosmack finished with 13 points, 18 rebounds and five blocked shots to lead Homer-Center to a 47-13 romp over Montrose March 20 at Central Mountain High School.
When it was over, coach Todd Smith looked back at the three-game, state-tournament run that advanced the Lady Meteors to the state semifinals for the second time in school history, matching the 2011 team.
"What a great run," Smith said. "We beat some really good teams. Marian (Catholic in the second round) was probably the biggest upset in the state."
Montrose was unable to duplicate that in the semifinal where the Wildcats ran off 15 straight points while holding the Lady Meteors scoreless for 9:55 to open a 24-5 lead late in the half.
The offensive struggles continued through the second half and Kosmack, who has more than 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds for her career, pulled down 13 defensive rebounds.
"She was little quicker than even I thought on film," Smith said. "She got from Point A to Point B. From high post, she got to the rim very quickly."
Kosmack led a 38-18 rebounding advantage by Homer-Center.
Hayley Pompey led Montrose with 10 points, five rebounds and four steals.
Mia Snyder had the only other points, opening the Montrose scoring on a 3-pointer with 4:10 left in the first quarter.
That cut the deficit to 6-3 and Pompey scored from just inside the 3-point arc 38 seconds later to make it 9-5.
The Lady Meteors struggled the rest of the way. They shot just 17.1 percent (6-for-35) from the floor and 14.3 percent on 3-pointers while committing 22 turnovers.
Payley Adams had four blocked shots and three steals in the loss while Riley Keihl had three assists.
The Lackawanna League Division 4 champion Lady Meteors finished 23-5.
Macy Sardone, Homer-Center's other 1,000-point scorer added 11 points and five steals.
Homer-Center allowed fewer than 20 points per game on average in its four state tournament wins.
In boys' volleyball, Blue Ridge and Mountain View each won Lackawanna League openers, leaving them behind only Abington Heights (2-0) in the early Lackawanna League standings.
Lock Haven's Krista Jones finished 10th in the 5,000-meter run Saturday in the Jim Taylor Invitational at Bucknell University.
The race drew a field of 21 runners from National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I, II and III schools.
Jones, a freshman from Elk Lake, was the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Freshman Women's Cross Country Runner of the Year in the fall for her efforts at Lock Haven, a Division II school.
The Lackawanna League baseball and softball seasons are scheduled to open Monday, April 3.
The league has realigned from four divisions to three in both sports.
Blue Ridge, Elk Lake, Forest City, Montrose, Mountain View, Susquehanna and Lackawanna Trail remain together. The former Division 4 teams are joined by Carbondale in the new Division 3.
The league openers in both sports include Blue Ridge at Elk Lake, Forest City at Montrose and Mountain View at Susquehanna.
TOM ROBINSON writes a weekly local sports column for the Susquehanna County Transcript. He can be reached online at RobbyTR@aol.com or followed on Twitter at @tomjrobinson.