St. Joseph girls overcome late push by Freeport, improve to 7-2 on season

By: Michael Love
Friday, December 27, 2024 | 9:24 PM

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The St. Joseph girls basketball team rolled to its first six victories of the season, winning them by an average of 33.3 points.

The Spartans had to work for their win Friday evening against Freeport in the first round of their holiday tournament at Walter Dlubak Athletic Center.

Down by six early in the fourth quarter, St. Joseph rallied to claim a 54-51 victory.

“I knew this would be a tough one,” St. Joseph coach Geoff Dutelle said. “Freeport has some young and talented players. We expected a battle. We only had one other close game, and we lost it by 2.”

St. Joseph helped its cause by going 16 of 19 from the free-throw line, including 9 of 10 in the fourth quarter.

“We went behind there by six, and then it all came together when we needed it to,” Dutelle said. “We need to play all 32 minutes. If it comes down to not making shots and you lose, and that’s the way it was looking for a while, you can live with that stuff. But we let a lot of things go defensively. We let them drive right, and we fouled quite a bit and we didn’t rebound well.

“Freeport very well could’ve won that game, and I would’ve said they deserved to win it. We put it together when it mattered, but leading up to that stretch, Freeport was the better team.”

Freeport gained possession with 30 seconds left in regulation, trailing 52-51, and the Yellowjackets played for the last shot.

However, St. Joseph freshman Bella Bartolovic stole the ball from Freeport’s Sophia Glass and was fouled with 6 seconds left.

She made both free throws to put the Spartans up three.

A Yellowjackets 3-point attempt at the buzzer rang off the rim.

“Bella plays pretty much the whole game and is usually guarding the ball,” Dutelle said. “I switched her with Gia (Richter) a little bit towards the end to give her a little bit of a break. She has those long arms, and she made a really nice play there.”

St. Joseph (7-2) advances to the championship game at 6 p.m. Saturday against Fox Chapel. The Foxes punched their ticket to the title game with an 81-34 victory over Valley on Friday.

“Fox Chapel is a good team,” Dutelle said. “They go deep and do a lot of different things. They press, and they share the ball pretty well.”

Freeport (1-8) will take on Valley in the consolation game at 3.

“The girls are super young. We’re playing a bunch of freshmen, and we’re working some others back in,” Yellowjackets coach Jason Kerr said. “We’re getting better. Our schedule has been tough. You look at our record, and you might not think that we’ve played that well, but we have. They are doing what we want them to do in a lot of areas.

“The girls will bounce back. They will be fine.”

Down 37-28 late in the third quarter, Freeport used a 10-0 run to close out the stanza. Glass and Lilly Holloway hit back-to-back 3-pointers to punctuate the rally.

The Yellowjackets extended the run to 16-0 early in the fourth to make it 43-37.

“We were taking bad shots, which enabled them to get out and catch us out of our defense,” Kerr said.

“But we cleaned that up and made a couple shots and got comfortable again. From that point on, it was just back and forth. We didn’t take care of the ball offensively the way we needed to down the stretch.”

St. Joseph freshman Gemma Hornack started her team’s rally with a 3-pointer to cut the deficit in half at 43-40.

“I thought Gemma hit the biggest shot of the game,” Dutelle said. “She had four fouls, and it’s hard to have rhythm with that. To come in and hit that shot, we don’t win if she doesn’t hit that shot.”

Each team had three players score in double digits.

Richter led all scorers with 20 points. Bartolovic added 15, and Kasey Cienik recorded 10 points for the Spartans.

Cece Schlegel paced Freeport with 12 points, and Glass and Maggie Conger added 11 each.

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: Freeport, St. Joseph