Lincoln Park returning to WPIAL title game after defeating Seton LaSalle in Class 3A semifinals

By: Jerin Steele
Monday, February 25, 2019 | 10:59 PM

After Seton LaSalle had a good second quarter to cut its deficit to seven points going into halftime, Lincoln Park coach Mike Bariski said he gave his team a brief history lesson on what can happen if you let an opponent keep the game close.

His players responded by running all over the gym and scoring quick buckets with their patented quick transition game to pull away and punch their ticket to the Pete.

The top-seeded Leopards started the third on a 17-3 run and rolled to a 75-58 victory over the No. 4-seeded Rebels in the WPIAL Class 3A boys basketball semifinals Monday night at Moon.

The Leopards (21-4) will aim to defend their WPIAL title when they face No. 3 North Catholic at 9 p.m. Thursday at the Petersen Events Center. It’s the fifth time in the last six years Lincoln Park has made the WPIAL finals.

“It’s still special,” Bariski said. “The one thing we may be comfortable with is shooting there, because we have experience. If it’s your first time walking into that place, I don’t care if you play for Pitt, you’re going to be like ‘Woah.’ The jitters will be there, we understand that, but we’ll make sure that they understand what they need to do. We’ll be ready to go.”

Lincoln Park led by as many as 14 points in the second quarter, but after a late Seton LaSalle surge, the Leopards were in a close game at halftime. After a brief pep talk, they answered in a big way in the third, outscoring the Rebels, 23-9 in the third.

“I let them know we needed the same effort that we had in the first six minutes of the game, and they responded,” Bariski said. “They’re kids. They come out and went up 10 or 12 points early and thought they won the game, so they started coasting. You can’t do that at this time of the season. After some encouragement, in the second half they played much better.”

Lincoln Park scored nearly half of its points on transition baskets, and that transition game fueled their run in the third quarter. Isaiah Smith scored 10 of his game-high 23 points in the third, including a pair of huge 3-pointers after running the floor to get open. Keeno Holmes also had a pair of 3-pointers during the run.

Bariski calls their up tempo pace “organized mayhem” and that they run the hills in Midland during the summer to be well-conditioned to run a break neck pace.

“It looks like we’re just running everywhere, but everyone knows where they are supposed to be,” Bariski said. “We do it on both defense and offense. If we don’t play fast, we won’t be as good of a team as we can be. We have to play fast. I always tell people that with a team like this, 60 to 70 percent of our points should come from transition.

“There are two hills in Midland and we go from June to November running those hills three days a week. We work hard on our conditioning so we can play this way.”

It was a rematch of last year’s WPIAL Class 3A title game which Lincoln Park won 62-47, but Seton LaSalle had an entirely new starting lineup after graduating five seniors.

Terrell Truss-Moore canned a 3-pointer from the corner with a minute remaining and Trevor O’Donnell hit a pair of free throws in the final 30 seconds to get Seton LaSalle to within 34-27 entering halftime, but Lincoln Park’s size and speed proved to be too much.

“We won the second quarter, but then they came out in the third quarter and had that run to get up 15 or so points, and with a team with their speed and athleticism made it really challenging for us,” Seton LaSalle coach Mark Walsh said. “They shot the ball well, too. We felt like if we could get the lead, maybe we could hold the tempo more, but they’re as fast of a team as I’ve seen moving the ball up the floor from defense to offense, and that was evident more than once tonight.”

The Rebels (19-5) will be in the PIAA tournament starting next week.

“After losing five starters and losing in the WPIAL final to (Lincoln Park) last year, to come back and share a tough section with North Catholic and to get to this point … I couldn’t be prouder of my team and where our program is,” Walsh said. “Tonight we just ran into a team that’s not only really good, but one that also played at the top of their game. If they are on the top of their game, I think everybody in the west will have a hard time beating them.”

Holmes had 12 points for the Leopards, and Andrew Wilder and Johnnie Bryant scored 11 apiece. Michael Bigley led the Rebels with 13 points, Daniel Boehme had 11 and O’Donnell scored 10.

Tags: Lincoln Park, Seton-LaSalle