North Catholic girls rally past Blackhawk in PIAA Class 4A 2nd round

By: William Whalen
Wednesday, March 13, 2019 | 10:48 PM

It wasn’t how North Catholic girls basketball coach Molly Rottmann drew it up, but she’ll take it.

After seeing her team struggle in nearly every phase of the game during the first half, Rottmann marched her Trojanettes into the locker room trailing by 16 points to a hot-shooting Blackhawk team. She didn’t know if her players would be able to overcome a double-digit deficit, but she knew win or lose, they could not end the season with a bad performance.

“That was not the way we drew it up,” Rottmann said. “The message at halftime was win or lose don’t (regret) the next 16 minutes. You don’t want to leave with regret.”

The three-time defending WPIAL champion Trojanettes received the coach’s message loud and clear. North Catholic clamped down the Cougars perimeter shooting and junior Kaylee Lewandowski came alive in the second half and put up 10 of her team-high 12 points as North Catholic defeated Blackhawk, 47-41, in the second round of the PIAA Class 4A playoffs at Fox Chapel on Wednesday night.

“In the beginning, I know that I wasn’t playing my best game, and a lot of balls were getting tipped off my hand,” said Lewandowski, who eclipsed 1,000 career points during the game. “In the locker room (at halftime), we said that it’s either do or die right now and we got to go all in.”

North Catholic (24-3) advances to the PIAA quarterfinals to play District 10 champion Villa Maria (22-3) on Saturday at a site and time to be determined. Villa Maria downed District 6 champ Forest Hills, 46-32, to advance.

“I really don’t know how to explain it,” Blackhawk coach Steve Lodovico said. “We really didn’t change anything that we did in the first half. We felt confident.”

The Trojanettes trailed 30-14 at halftime.

Lewandowski found her stroke on a long jumper to cut into Blackhawk’s lead at 30-18. Emma Pospisil added a 3-pointer and Lewandowski added a pull-up jumper make it 30-23 with 2 minutes, 49 seconds remaining on the third-quarter clock.

All of the sudden, North Catholic started to look like the defending WPIAL champions again.

“We did a better job communicating,” Rottmann said. “I think we just did a better job of locking down on them.”

Lewandowski finished off the third quarter with back-to-back baskets, and the 16-point Blackhawk lead had dwindled down to just five points at 34-29. The Trojans held Blackhawk to just four points in the third quarter.

“We’re playing a good team, but we just picked a bad time to go cold from the floor,” Lodovico said.

North Catholic junior guard Tess Myers came through in the fourth quarter when she connected on two free throws and came back down the floor to swish a 3-pointer from the right corner to tie the game at 34-34 with 6:21 remaining. The Trojanettes never trailed again.

“We know how we can play, we know what we can do, and it’s just a matter of us doing it,” Myers said. “We just stayed together, and we knew what we needed to do.”

North Catholic junior Cassie Foster connected on a nice baseline layup, and junior Lucy Waskiewicz added a layup to extend the Trojanettes’ lead. Foster finished with 12 points and hit key free throws down the stretch to preserve the lead and the win.

“It all just comes back to we were not able to get back into our press,” Lodovico said. “If we can press you, we’ll score 70 (points). If we can’t and we’re going back, it’s hard for us to score just because of the size of our kids.”

Lodovico couldn’t have asked for anything more out of his team in the first half. Shots were falling, the Cougars were cleaning up under the glass, and for 16 minutes Blackhawk had the Trojans playing on their heels.

“There were a few times where I wasn’t hitting, (Lewandowski) wasn’t hitting and we had a few turnovers and coach just said do what we needed to do,” Myers said.

Blackhawk senior Mady Aulbach was on fire in the first half. The 5-foot-5 guard drained three consecutive 3-pointers in the first quarter to help the Cougars lead 14-12. Aulbach finished with 12 points.

Blackhawk’s Mackenzie Amalia drilled a jumper from the paint and came back with a long ball from the right elbow to extend the Cougars’ lead to 17-12. She finished with a game-high 19 points.

The Cougars stayed hot in the second quarter. Blackhawk’s Alivia Thompson drained a deep jumper and Jolie Strati added another 3-pointer. The Trojanettes managed just four second-quarter points.

“I think, after today, we need to kind of re-evaluate because the teams are only going to get better,” Myers said. “We can’t just be a second-half team. We need to come out and push harder in the first half. We’ll be ready on Saturday.”

William Whalen is a freelance writer.

Tags: Blackhawk, North Catholic