Deer Lakes girls pull away from Seton LaSalle in Class 3A 1st round

By: William Whalen
Wednesday, February 20, 2019 | 11:16 PM

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Western Pennsylvanians saw nearly every form of precipitation Wednesday: snow, ice, sleet and rain.

Weather conditions forced schools to call a two-hour delay or cancel classes, and it showed on the court.

The Deer Lakes and Seton LaSalle girls played like two teams that were on a two-quarter delay during the first round of the WPIAL Class 3A playoffs at Fox Chapel.

However, freshman Reese Hasley scored a game-high 15 points, and No. 7 Deer Lakes managed to find momentum and pull away in the second half to down No. 10 Seton LaSalle, 47-32.

“My dad said it very well. He said, ‘It was like watching paint dry,’ ” Deer Lakes coach Dave Petruska said about his team’s first-half performance. “In my eyes, that’s not how I saw it. The way I see it is that we struggled at first because we haven’t had the most success in the playoffs.”

Deer Lakes (17-6) moves on to the quarterfinals and will face No. 2 South Park (16-6) on Saturday at site and time to be determined. The win is not only Petruska’s 50th career win, but also his first postseason victory during his four-year tenure. It’s also the first time the Deer Lakes boys and girls basketball teams have advanced out of the first round of the playoffs together since the 1985 season.

Seton LaSalle (11-11) ended a season in which few people expected its young squad to reach the playoffs.

“We just couldn’t hit that run that we needed,” Seton LaSalle coach Jordan Burkes said. “We couldn’t get into a flow offensively. It just didn’t fall the way we wanted it to.”

Coming out of halftime, the score resembled more of a football game that it did basketball. All that separated Deer Lakes and Seton LaSalle was an extra point, with the Lancers leading 14-13. Then came the Lancers’ march.

Cameron Simurda led the third-quarter charge. She picked off a pass near midcourt and took it the other way for a layup. Abigail Buechel added a basket, and Hasley added a 3-pointer from the right elbow to break the game open.

“We had the jitters,” Hasley said. “We were just trying to get into the flow of things. In that third quarter, we really stepped it up and got into it hard.”

Julia Hollibaugh picked off another pass for another easy layup before Seton LaSalle called timeout with 5 minutes, 11 seconds remaining in the third quarter. The Lancers were rolling on offense and defense.

“We have a lot of slow starts unfortunately, but we always come back,” Hollibaugh said.

Hollibaugh finished with 13 points. Deer Lakes came out of the timeout and went back to work. Hasley added a 3-pointer from the right corner, and Buechel made a 3 from the top of the arc to give Deer Lakes a 31-14 lead late in the third quarter.

The big difference between the first and second halves for the Lancers was their defense. Deer Lakes held the Rebels to three points in the third quarter. Chloe Lestitan connected on a free throw, and Vanessa Hudson made a jumper from the paint at the buzzer for the Rebels’ lone field goal of the quarter. Lestitan was the only Rebel to finish in double figures with 12 points.

“We would hit a little spurt here and there, but we couldn’t get a consistent spurt to keep it going and go on a run there,” Burkes said. “We were boxing out the best we’ve boxed out the entire season.”

Hasley, Hollibaugh and Anna Solomon paced the Lancers’ fourth-quarter offense.

“Once they realized what they were able to do, it started clicking all at once,” Petruska said.

The first half was an entirely different story. Neither teams’ shots were falling, and neither team could rebound at the offensive end, setting up back-and-forth play up and down the court. The Lancers squeaked out of the first quarter with a 9-8 lead.

“We had scouted Seton LaSalle very, very well,” Petruska said. “What I think also factored into the first half was just how well they scouted us. They knew everything we were trying to do in that first half.”

The Rebels took their only lead of the game with 1:28 left in the half when Lestitan drove the lane for a layup to put Seton LaSalle ahead 13-12. Simurda came back and gave Deer Lakes the lead for good on a layup with 10 seconds remaining in the half.

“We’re looking to go far,” Hasley said. “We’re coming for the next team that is ahead of us and then whoever is next. We’re looking to win every single game.”

William Whalen is a freelance writer.

Tags: Deer Lakes, Seton-LaSalle