OLSH girls edge Brentwood for 1st WPIAL basketball championship

By: George Guido
Thursday, February 28, 2019 | 7:08 PM

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Our Lady of the Sacred Heart girls basketball coach Don Eberle picked a great time for his 300th career coaching victory.

His Chargers won the first WPIAL basketball title in the program’s history with a 50-48 victory in the Class 2A finals Thursday at Pitt’s Petersen Events Center.

OLSH had a 44-35 lead with 1 minute, 52 seconds left in the game and had to withstand a furious, late Brentwood rally. The Spartans’ Maura Daly barely stepped inside the 3-point arc and was fouled while making a shot with .4 seconds to go.

The foul shot was missed, and the Chargers’ celebration got underway.

“Our assistant coach keeps stats like that for us,” said Eberle, in his 16th season at the helm. “He mentioned it to the girls the other day that the WPIAL championship would be 300 wins. I was thinking it was a long shot then.”

The Chargers had to defeat No. 1-seeded and defending WPIAL champion Bishop Canevin to reach the finals.

“We didn’t know it was going to be his 300th win until recently,” guard Haley Hamilton said. “He kind of hid that from us. But this was like the cherry on top, like a bonus.”

OLSH (21-4) will face Blairsville, the No. 4 seed from District 6, in the PIAA opener March 8 at a site and time to be determined.

Brentwood, which was seeking its first WPIAL title since 1979, is now 19-4 and will play Penns Manor from Indiana County in the PIAA opener March 8.

“We didn’t lose this game in the fourth quarter, we lost it in the first quarter,” Spartans coach Rachel Thomas said. “We came out and just struggled, and it was too hard for us to overcome.”

Thomas was forced to call a timeout when her team was behind 9-2 with less than six minutes gone in the game.

Said Thomas: “I just told them to play their game. They knew what to expect. It’s the same court, the hoops are 10 feet high, same type of ball. They just had to trust themselves. They worked hard to get here. I didn’t want them to fold just because of where we were.”

Brentwood cut the OLSH lead to two twice, but couldn’t catch the Chargers.

After the Spartans came close in the third quarter, two assists from Norling to Emily Schuck resulted in key baskets.

While Brentwood was coming back in the fourth quarter, the Chargers were effective from the foul line, going 12 of 14, led by Norling’s 8 of 8.

“I’m just as shocked as everyone else,” said Norling, who’s headed to Pitt-Johnstown in the fall. “We all have our days at the foul line. They decided to fall tonight, and I was so happy.”

“It’s something that we focus on with coach (Sam) Zyroll,” Eberle said. “We do a lot of things for foul shots, we do competitive teams in the gym. We also have a set system where everyone shoots foul shots the same way.”

The win also avenged a quarterfinals setback against Brentwood in last year’s WPIAL tournament — or, as the Eberle likes to remind the girls — 371 days ago.

“It’s amazing, we worked really hard for it,” Norling said of the title. “It’s been a long time for us to get here, but it’s so worth it.”

Natalie Murrio, who scored the first seven points for Brentwood, finished with 27 points — 14 in the frantic fourth quarter.

“I think there were a couple calls that hurt us at critical moments,” Thomas said. “I thought Maura had a three there at the end of the game. But it seemed just as we’re about to tie it or take the lead, we’d make a mistake or our shot didn’t fall, and they went down and scored. It took some of the wind out of our sails.”

It was the first title game appearance for Brentwood since 1994 when the Spartans fell to Avonworth.

OLSH had made the title game in 2008, losing to South Park.

Tags: Brentwood, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart