Fox Chapel girls grab momentum with tournament win over Deer Lakes

By: Michael Love
Wednesday, December 29, 2021 | 5:38 PM

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In a game featuring several scoring runs, the Fox Chapel girls basketball team had the biggest one at a crucial point to take control of its Peter Sauer Memorial Tournament matchup with Deer Lakes on Wednesday afternoon at Shady Side Academy.

Ahead by just two points with a little more than three minutes left in the third quarter, the Foxes countered an 8-2 Lancers run by scoring 19 of the next 20 points, finishing off a 52-30 victory.

“We both came in really wanting to get this win to get some momentum,” Fox Chapel coach Marty Matvey said. “Being a young team, one of the things we’re trying to learn is how we can punch to dictate the pace of the game, and if someone hits us, how do we counter that? We talked about that in the timeout after they cut it to the two-point lead.

“It then was up to us with how we were going to dictate things with our offense in terms of execution and how we dictated with our defense in keeping the ball out of (Deer Lakes senior standout Reese Hasley’s) hands. We wanted to throw two punches to their one and give us the advantage, and we were able to do that.”

Fox Chapel, which played the game without its full allotment of players including sophomore standout guard Skye Byrnes because of a knee injury, was able to bounce back from a 23-point loss at Baldwin two days before Christmas.

The Foxes, who evened their record at 4-4, will attempt to move above .500 when they face Shady Side Academy at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.

“For a young team to be where we’re at right now, we hope to continue to build on some of these positives like we had (against Deer Lakes),” Matvey said. “The girls have really been resilient. We still have a lot of work to do, but we know it is possible to string together a couple of wins, and hopefully (Tuesday) is the start of that as we get into section play.”

Deer Lakes, which fell to 1-4, will hope to snap a four-game losing skid when it plays at noon Thursday against South Side.

“The thing about these tournaments is the girls don’t have to think about this game for too long,” Deer Lakes coach Sam Salih said. “We are right back at it tomorrow and have a good chance to go out, play hard and get a win.”

Deer Lakes senior Lydia Guthrie, who scored all four of her points in the third quarter, converted a layup at the 3-minute, 2-second mark to make it a one-possession lead for Fox Chapel at 27-25.

But Foxes freshman Brooke Fenton stopped the Lancers’ momentum with a 3-pointer from the top of the arc with two minutes on the third-quarter clock to move her team back to a five-point advantage.

Fox Chapel freshman forward Natalia Schaffer, who is back in action after an injury suffered before the start of the season, converted a jumper with 27 seconds left to set the Foxes ahead 32-25 as the teams moved to the fourth.

Fenton added two 3-pointers, junior Elsie Smith hit a layup and a shot from long range and Schaffer completed a three-point play to give Fox Chapel a 43-26 lead with 4:06 to go.

“We had a lot of girls step up during that run to get us to that nice lead,” Matvey said. “We are a little shorthanded with some people out, so we need everyone to contribute.”

Smith, who scored just one point over the second and third quarters after tallying eight in the first, finished with a game-best 14 points to go with 11 rebounds.

Fenton ended in double figures with 11, Schaffer scored seven of her nine total points in the fourth quarter and freshman Bella Urso contributed eight points and seven rebounds.

Deer Lakes senior Nikki Fleming hit a pair of first-half 3-pointers and ended with a team-high nine points. Hasley, frustrated for most of the game as the Fox Chapel defensive gameplan clamped down on her efforts, added eight.

Jessica Sullivan scored all seven of her points in the second quarter.

“I thought we did a good job of rebounding the ball and limiting them to one shot (during the third-quarter run),” Salih said. “We were able to be successful with our turnover-for-turnover situations and were able to score off of that. The biggest issue, I think, was staying in that moment and not letting that momentum slip away, and that is what happened.

“(Fox Chapel) made a couple of big shots, and it kind of got away from us from there. The last few games, we’ve gotten down, and we’ve shown a lot of fight, but we just have to continue working towards rewarding ourselves for the effort.”

Fox Chapel jumped out to a 9-2 lead in the first three and a half minutes of the first quarter and was ahead 12-5 after one. Deer Lakes countered a 7-0 run and 21-6 score with an 8-0 run of its own to close the gap to six 1:17 before the break.

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: Deer Lakes, Fox Chapel