Plum girls hold off furious Kiski Area rally to win

By: Michael Love
Thursday, January 12, 2023 | 10:07 PM

With 3 minutes, 41 seconds left in Thursday’s Section 1-5A girls basketball game at Plum, the host Mustangs held a 15-point lead on Kiski Area and hoped to put the game on ice.

But the Cavaliers, led by junior Abbie Johns, wouldn’t go away.

Johns scored 10 straight points for Kiski Area to cut into the Plum advantage, but the deficit was too much to overcome.

Three Mustangs finished in double figures — junior Megan Marston led with 16, freshman Riley Stephens came off the bench to score 14 and junior Pascale Olczak added 11 — as Plum bounced back from a one-point loss to Penn Hills on Tuesday with a 54-47 victory over the Cavaliers.

“The big thing for us is that we need to be more consistent from game to game and pay attention to detail because the little things add up, either in your favor or against you,” Plum coach Rich Mull said.

“We didn’t play our best on Tuesday, and it was nice to come back tonight to get this win.”

Plum got back in the section win column after the Penn Hills loss and also a setback to Woodland Hills on Jan. 2. The Mustangs are 3-2 in the section and 9-5 overall.

They will close the first half of the section slate Monday at section leader Indiana.

“It was an important win in the section to keep pace with the other top teams,” Mull said. “The section is really tough.”

Indiana topped Woodland Hills on Thursday to improve to 5-0, and Franklin Regional upped its record to 4-2 with a victory over Gateway.

Woodland Hills also is 3-2 in the section, and Penn Hills is 2-3.

Johns finished with 26 points — she scored 17 in the second half and all 10 of Kiski’s points in the fourth — for a Cavaliers team that hoped to score a section win and get back in the mix.

But Kiski, which also came close in an overtime loss to section foe Franklin Regional last week, fell to 4-10 overall and 1-4 in section play.

“I am proud of my girls,” Kiski Area coach Dave Williamson said. “No matter what the margin is, they do not quit. Regardless of the opponent, they fight and they scrap. We’re undersized most games, but I am proud of their effort.

“I tip my hat to Plum. Defensively, they caught us in some mismatches. They made some adjustments at halftime and really put us in trouble.”

Stephens came off the bench in the second quarter and scored nine points with six coming on a pair of 3-pointers.

She and Marston, who scored seven in the second, helped fuel a 15-4 Mustangs run over the final four minutes of the quarter that turned a 23-14 Cavaliers advantage into a 29-27 Plum lead at halftime.

“Hopefully, the game is slowing down even more for Riley,” Mull said. “She had a nice game tonight.”

Olczak tallied seven of her 11 points in the third quarter, and Plum led 43-37 after three.

The Mustangs got a jumper from Olczak, a 3-pointer from junior Rayla Smith, and layups from Marston and senior Cam Rogers to balloon the lead to 52-37, their largest of the game.

Plum senior forward Dannika Susko made a layup early in the third quarter to give her team a 33-29 advantage. On the play, she collided with a Kiski Area defender.

Feeling a little woozy from the contact, Susko exited the game to recover. She returned with 3 minutes, 37 seconds left in the fourth and finished the game with eight points and seven rebounds.

She scored six of her eight points in the first quarter as the Mustangs trailed 13-11 after the first eight minutes.

Junior Cora Coleman, senior Lexiann Colaianni and junior Zoe Holm each scored six points for the Cavaliers, and sophomore Rikiya Garcia-Broaden collected nine rebounds.

Up next for Kiski Area is home section game against Penn Hills on Tuesday.

“We’ve scared a lot of teams, but it just hurts that we can’t get over the hump in some of these games,” Williamson said.

“It just comes down to being able to put a full four quarters together. Tonight, it was just too big of a hole to dig out of at the end.”

Michael Love is a TribLive reporter covering sports in the Alle-Kiski Valley and the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A Clearfield native and a graduate of Westminster (Pa.), he joined the Trib in 2002 after spending five years at the Clearfield Progress. He can be reached at mlove@triblive.com.

Tags: Kiski Area, Plum