Many factors have contributed to North Schuylkill’s success this season, but two are consistently present — a big height advantage and outstanding guard play.
Both were present again Friday when the top-ranked Spartans beat No. 8 Pine Grove 52-33 in the District 11 Class AA girls’ basketball quarterfinals at Martz Hall.
North Schuylkill guard Tiff Lapotsky and forward Carly Gregas fueled an 18-3 run spanning the third and fourth quarters to allow the Spartans to cruise to victory after leading by only eight points at halftime.
The Spartans (23-2) play fifth-seeded Salisbury in the semifi-
nals Tuesday. The Falcons beat No. 4 Palmerton 61-47 in the quarterfinals.
“Tiff and Carly, they’re our big scorers — everybody knows that,” North Schuylkill coach John Rizzo said. “It was nice to get a run going. We thought for a little bit we were stagnant, especially in the first half.”
Back-to-back buckets by Pine Grove’s Rachel Edge pulled the Cardinals within eight points (32-24) with three minutes left in the third quarter before Lapotsky and Gregas started the run.
Lapotsky sank a 3-pointer before Gregas tallied two straight layups on lobbed passes from Chase Stokes and Averi Jordan.
“We have really good chemistry this year. We’re all pretty close,” Gregas said. “We always stress in practice you need to look in when you square up to get the ball. We all just work together to get the best shot possible.”
Gregas was fed beautiful passes all night, including on back-to-back plays in the second quarter. Rachel Bell slung the ball into the 6-foot senior before Nina Marone made the final pass of a tic-tac-toe play to Gregas.
“We knew that it was key because they had a height disadvantage,” Gregas added. “We knew we needed to crash the boards and rebound hard.”
Cayleen Conrad hit a 3 to start the fourth quarter for Pine Grove (11-12), but Lapotsky registered 10 straight points to up North Schuylkill’s lead to an insurmountable 50-27 with 4:54 remaining.
Lapotsky hit four 3s to finish with a game-high 21 points. She also had four steals, four rebounds and two assists.
Gregas had 11 points, seven rebounds, two steals and a block.
Waverly Snyder added 11 points for the Spartans, jump-starting the offense with eight first-quarter points.
Faith Shiffer led Pine Grove’s offense with nine points. Rachel Edge and Morgan Edge each tallied seven. Rachel also contributed four assists and two steals.
The Cardinals’ perimeter shooting kept them in the game until the Spartans’ late run.
Gregas’ back-to-back buckets from Bell and Marone put North Schuylkill ahead 24-13 with 2:15 to play in the first half, but Jen Kaufman and Shiffer each canned 3s to help cut the Cardinals’ deficit to 28-20 at halftime.
Shiffer finished with three 3s, while Kaufman, Morgan Edge and Rachel Edge each had one.
“At halftime, we came up with this big speech about how we have to step it up,” Lapotsky said. “Their shots were going in and some of them were lucky shots, some of them were just shots that are easy points. We needed to get in there and we needed to step it up.”
Defensively, that plan worked. Pine Grove turned the ball over on its first five possessions of the second half. Offensively, however, North Schuylkill only tallied one point from those five turnovers.
“Honestly, you kind of hate to say this, but I kind of thought we gave it away in the beginning,” Pine Grove coach Chris George said. “I thought we played well early on. We shot well, we did mostly what we wanted to do but we just had too many little breakdowns. And we’re not good enough to overcome that. We’re a little young and we knew we weren’t going to keep shooting that well for the whole game.”
George also stressed the importance of not letting North Schuylkill get points in the paint, which Pine Grove wasn’t able to execute. Lapotsky scored eight of her points driving the lane, Gregas made all of her field goals in the paint and North Schuylkill got two points each from Stokes, Sam Shinkus and Kelly Damiter in the low post.
This time last season, North Schuylkill was 0-2 in the playoffs and was headed home for the season following losses to Marian and Southern Lehigh.
Now, the Spartans are 3-0 in the postseason and have their sights set on more hardware.
“We got a nice monkey off our back there,” Rizzo said. “And I wouldn’t expect anything less because of these kids and how resilient they are and the fact that losing in the past has helped them motivate themselves to be winners this year. They’re winners in all aspects.”
Game Summary
District 11 Class AA quarterfinals
At Martz Hall
PINE GROVE (33) — Cay. Conrad 1 0-0 3, R. Edge 3 0-0 7, Shiffer 3 0-2 9, M. Edge 2 2-3 7, Whitman 0 0-0 0, Wolff 2 0-0 4, Sleva 0 0-0 0, Kaufman 1 0-0 3, Car. Conrad 0 0-2 0, Geiger 0 0-0 0, Felty 0 0-0 0, Zimmerman 0 0-0 0, Mabry 0 0-0 0. Totals 12 2-7 33.
NORTH SCHUYLKILL (52) — Marone 0 3-4 3, C. Gregas 5 1-1 11, Lapotsky 8 1-4 21, Snyder 4 0-0 11, Jordan 0 0-0 0, Stokes 1 0-0 2, Shinkus 1 0-0 2, Bell 0 0-0 0, Damiter 1 0-0 2, Long 0 0-0 0. Totals 20 5-9 52.
Pn Grve (11-12) 8 12 4 8 — 33 N. Sch. (23-2) 16 12 12 12 — 52
3-point FGs: Cay. Conrad, R. Edge, Shiffer 3, M. Edge, Kaufman, Lapotsky 4, Snyder 3