Burrelli, Neshannock girls top Avonworth in Class 3A semifinals

By: Jim Equels Jr.
Wednesday, February 27, 2019 | 8:46 PM

Neshannock came into the WPIAL tournament as the perennial favorite to win the Class 3A crown.

The No. 1-seeded Lancers rolled to a 21-2 record — their only losses coming to Beaver, last season’s Class 4A runner-up, and Central Valley, which will play in this season’s 4A title game — and entered its WPIAL semifinal game against Avonworth on Wednesday night riding a 17-game winning streak.

Included in that streak were two convincing wins over Avonworth by a combined 40 points. Despite that, early in the fourth quarter Wednesday Neshannock was unable to shake No. 5 Avonworth from its heels, clinging to a six-point lead.

At that point, Bella Burrelli had seen enough.

Burrelli, a 5-foot-11 senior forward, scored Neshannock’s next 13 points as the Lancers pulled away for a 47-37 victory. Neshannock will meet No. 3 Shady Side Academy (19-3) on Saturday in the WPIAL Class 3A championship at Pitt’s Peterson Events Center.

“I just got in a groove, and once you’re in a groove it gets a lot easier to play,” said Burrelli, who led all scorers with 24 points. “At the beginning of the game I was not finishing as well as I wanted to. At halftime, I just said to myself, ‘All right, you need to start finishing, now.’”

“She’s been the cog to our wheel,” Neshannock coach Luanne Grybowski said of Burrelli. “She worked so hard on both ends of the floor — offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds, blocking shots. She just kept working and working.”

After rallying late in the first half, Avonworth (17-7) stayed within striking distance and pulled to with six points, 32-26, on a basket by Hayden Robinson with 7:11 left in the game and was appearing as if it was gaining confidence. But Neshannock answered with a 15-7 run — including 13 consecutive points by Burrelli — to put the game away and reach the WPIAL title game for the second time in the last three years.

Burrelli scored all of her points in the run within 8 feet of the basket. She had three layups, an 8-foot jumper and hit 4 of 5 free throws in a span of 5:07.

“We didn’t want to get frustrated,” Burrelli said of being unable to shake an Avonworth team that it has dominated twice this season. “I’ve gotten frustrated in the past, and it didn’t turn out well. You’ve just got to play through it. We just had to focus on shutting them down on defense. It was definitely a wake-up call though.”

As dominant as Burrelli was on Wednesday, and has been throughout the season, averaging 17 points a game, basketball is not her best sport. One of the WPIAL’s top volleyball players, Burrelli will play that sport at Edinboro next season.

For now, however, Burrelli and her teammates are focusing on winning a basketball title, one that eluded the Lancers on their last trip to Peterson Events Center two years ago.

“The first time we were there the court was really big,” Burrelli said. “We were not expecting that.”

Meanwhile, playing for a title is nothing new for Grybowski, who has more than 600 career victories and won four WPIAL titles at New Castle and will be attempting to win her first at Neshannock.

“It’s any other game,” Grybowski said. “It might be a championship game, but it’s any other game. It’s gonna be a dog fight. Nothing is easy at this point.”

Tags: Avonworth, Neshannock