Blue Streaks hold off L-S, Blazers cruise past Ephrata in league semifinals
JEFFREY REINHART jreinhart@LNPnews.com
Longest winning streak in the Lancaster-Lebanon League – over.
Pre-tournament favorites – out.
Kiersten Green matched her career-high with 25 points, and Manheim Township set the pace and the tempo from the start and knocked off Lampeter-Strasburg 43-35 in an L-L girls’ basketball league semifinal Thursday night at Hempfield.
L-S, the Section 3 champ, had its 22-game winning streak snapped, and the Pioneers were denied a shot at the finals.
Instead, Township, the Section 1 champ, won for the 13th time in its last 14 games and will play for the league championship on its home court Saturday at 1 p.m. against Section 4 champ Lancaster Mennonite, which toppled Section 2 champ Ephrata 62-30 in Thursday’s other semifinal.
Plenty more from Township’s big victory coming Friday. Please check back here for audio Podcast interviews with Kiersten Green and Streaks’ coach Lance Wagner.
Neither L-S nor Township shot the ball particularly well, and both teams turned the ball over a few too many times – L-S 17, Streaks 15 – but Township won this game by doing what it does best – grinding it out in the paint, playing pesky defense – in this case an amoeba zone which gave the Pioneers fits – and owning the boards.
Township outrebounded L-S 40-35.
Green supplied the offensive boost for the Streaks. She scored 8 of Township’s 12 second-quarter points, when the Streak outscored L-S 12-4 and took a 19-18 lead into the locker room.
L-S (22-2) led 14-7 after the first quarter, and the Pioneers looked, well, like themselves early. Lisa Boyer scored 7 first-quarter points and Katie Lynch bottomed a pair of 3-pointers in the first eight minutes and L-S looked like it was on its merry way.
But Township (18-3) got down to business in the second quarter, not allowing the Pioneers to make a single field goal in that eight-minute stretch.
Boyer scored all 8 of the Pioneers’ third-quarter points, but Green had two transition buckets and two foul shots and Annie Feingold had a basket in the lane for Township, which led 27-26 heading into the fourth.
It was still anyone’s game with about 2 minutes to go. That’s when Township’s Abby Zielinski stepped up and made two gigantic plays.
First, she scored on a drive to the hoop to put Township up by five. Then she hustled back on defense, picked off a pass, and went coast-to-coast, hit a driving layup and drew a foul and the Streaks were up 7.
Green hit three free throws and Jordan Brewer dropped in a pair of foul shots in the waning seconds to help the Streaks hold off L-S.
Boyer scored 15 points and Lynch added 9 points for L-S. Township’s post players did a nice job on L-S shot-blocker Renee Fritz, who scored just 3 points, had 6 boards and blocked 2 shots. She had a triple-double (12 points, 13 boards, 10 blocks) in the Pioneers’ first-round win over Solanco.
Township is back in the league title game for the first time since 1997, when the Streaks knocked off Columbia 49-47. It was Township’s fifth league crown. The Streaks also won league titles in 1994, 1987, 1986 and 1985.
Also Thursday:
Lancaster Mennonite 62, Ephrata 30
At Warwick, Katelyn Vanderhoff was up to her old tricks, pumping in a game-high 26 points, and the Blazers used a 26-8 second-quarter blitz to seize control for good, and zoomed past the Mountaineers and into the league finals for the second year in a row.
Last season, in its first trip to the league finals, Mennonite fell to Hempfield 46-42.
The Blazers (22-2) can get a little redemption Saturday at 1 p.m. when they take on Manheim Township – on Township’s home floor.
Vanderhoff hit a pair of 3-pointers, Steph Rhienheimer canned a pair of 3-pointers, and Erin LaVenice chipped in with 13 points for Mennonite, which led Ephrata 35-12 at the half, and then outscored the Mounts 17-4 in the third quarter to open up some more breathing room.
It was the fourth game in a row Vanderhoff scored 21 or more points, and it was the 15th time this season the University of Maine recruit scored at least 20 points in a game, as Mennonite won its 15th game in a row and snapped Ephrata’s three-game winning streak.
Aly Goodman scored 15 points for Ephrata (14-10), which must turn around and play a District 3 Quad-A pigtail play-in game Friday night at home against perennial Mid-Penn power Harrisburg.
