‘Bad night’ eliminates North Hills in 1st round of PIAA playoffs

By: Chris Harlan
Friday, March 10, 2023 | 11:33 PM

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North Hills spent the past 10 days putting up shots in its own gym, making Friday’s shooting woes hard to explain.

The Indians shot 39% from the field and endured two single-digit quarters in a 56-52 home-court loss to Mechanicsburg in the first round of the PIAA Class 5A playoffs. The Indians were leading at halftime before a nine-point third quarter dashed their state tournament hopes.

“We had a bad night on a bad night,” coach Buzz Gabos said.

North Hills’ shooters went 21 for 54 from the field, including 19 missed shots from inside the arc. Those misses hurt the team most in the third quarter, when they made only three baskets and let a four-point lead become a 10-point deficit.

Mechanicsburg scored 12 straight points in one span.

“We went through stretches where it seemed we couldn’t make anything,” Gabos said. “Every time we missed a layup, they made a shot and made us pay.”

Mechanicsburg (19-8), the fourth-place team from District 3, saw its lead peak at 49-36 midway through the fourth quarter.

North Hills (20-7) played without sophomore point guard Zach Pollaro, who injured an ankle in practice. The Indians had averaged 70 points per game this season but were held to quarters of eight, 13 and nine points before scoring 22 in the fourth.

Indians junior Royce Parham scored a game-high 22 points on 9 of 18 shooting and had 12 rebounds. Jake Pollaro added nine points on three first-half 3-pointers.

“Even with Zach out and maybe a little bit out of rhythm, we thought if we play our game, move the basketball, shoot it well enough and score enough points, we’d be OK,” Gabos said.

The 52 points tied for the team’s fourth-lowest total this season.

Mechanicsburg coach Mike Gaffey said his staff prepared for Friday’s game by studying video of North Hills’ matchups against South Fayette, including a low-scoring Feb. 7 game that the Indians lost 48-45. Gaffey had his team adopt a similar approach Friday, using a patient offense to keep the score low.

Sophomore guard Chance Yanoski led Mechanicsburg with 17 points, including 14 after halftime. Josh Smith, another sophomore guard, added 13 points.

“We haven’t played that way this year,” said Gaffey, who’s in his first season at Mechanicsburg. “When you play three sophomores, it’s hard to get guys to realize, ‘Hey, there’s no shot clock.’ Try to be patient, if there’s something we can do to make them uncomfortable.

“Every tape we watched, (North Hills) got it in and scored within 3.5 seconds. All of our coaches were like: ‘You got any ideas? No. You? No.’”

They succeeded in keeping the score low. The teams were tied 8-8 after one quarter and North Hills led 21-17 at half. Three 3-pointers by Jake Pollaro boosted the Indians’ first-half offense, but they went 2 for 12 from beyond the arc in the second half.

Mechanicsburg got hot, making 6 of 8 3-pointers after halftime. Consecutive 3s by Yanoski and Smith late in the third quarter gave the Wildcats a 40-30 lead entering the fourth.

“For whatever reason, we just didn’t have a whole lot of rhythm,” Gabos said.

North Hills made it close in the fourth as Mechanicsburg made only 5 of 9 free throws.

Parham scored 10 points in the final quarter, including a layup with 30 seconds left that cut Mechanicsburg’s lead to 54-48. Another layup at the 17-second mark trimmed the lead to five.

The last came with eight seconds left, narrowing the lead to four.

Mechanicsburg starts no one taller than 6-foot-3, so the 6-8 Parham was a matchup problem. The Wildcats attacked him with what Gaffey dubbed a “Desert Swarm” defense.

Essentially, whenever Parham got the ball, he’d face two or three defenders at a time.

“We did a pretty good job of that today,” Gaffey said. “We tried to make life difficult for him. He’s amazing. I watched enough of him (on video) where I haven’t slept in days.”

The ride from Mechanicsburg to North Hills is around 200 miles and more than three hours, so Gaffey’s team stopped at Pitt-Greensburg on the way. They’d arranged with UPG coach Chris Klimchock to shoot around in the college gym.

“I met his dad a number of years ago at camps … and one of our assistant coaches worked there as an assistant,” said Gaffey, a former coach at Penn State Harrisburg. “It’s spring break, so there’s nobody on campus.”

North Hills hadn’t played in 10 days, since winning the WPIAL third-place game Feb. 28, but Gabos said rust wasn’t a factor. There was no simple answer for the team’s struggles, he said.

“Most nights, even on nights when we lost, we usually found something or we found a guy,” Gabos said. “Somebody would take over. Or we’d press a team out of the blue and turn them over. Tonight, no matter what we tried to do, it didn’t seem to work.”

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.

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