Villanova, PA -

Fast Break – The Penn Wood Patriots defeated the Pennsbury Falcons 54-50 last Saturday night at Villanova to advance to the 4th round of the 4A State tournament.  The Patriots were led in scoring by Duane Johnson, who had 15.  Tyree Johnson and Aaron Brown chipped in 13 points apiece.    Pennsbury was led in scoring by Dalton Pepper, who had 15, and Eddie DiRugeris, who had 11.  Pennsbury led for most of the game, until Penn Wood came through with an inspired 4th quarter (outscoring Pennsbury 18-10) led by Tyree Johnson, who scored 10 points in the frame.  Penn Wood moves on to play Mount Lebanon on Wednesday at Big Spring High School for the right to move on to the State championship game.

3 Pointer:

1.  The big difference maker  in this game was the change in the defensive strategy by Penn Wood for the second half.  In the first half, they mainly employed a 2-1-2 zone.  Pennsbury took advantage of this by controlling the tempo of the game; it was a methodical pace.  I noticed that the Falcons took a lot of shots from the sides in the first half, especially the right corner.  Penn Wood seemed to notice this once they talked it over at halftime, and attacked this defensively in the second half.  When Pennsbury held the ball on the sides in the second half, the Patriots put extra pressure on that ball handler and a few times trapped that ball handler against the sideline.  This was key in creating turnovers and changing the pace of the game towards Penn Wood’s favor.

2.  Another key defensive adjustment Penn Wood made had to do with containing Pennsbury star Dalton Pepper in the second half.  Pepper had a strong first half, scoring 11 points.  There was one stretch where he was knocked down on offense, and took it personally, scoring the next 5 points for his team.  In the second half, however, Penn Wood limited him to 4 points.  Part of this was due to the added pressure they put on the ball handlers before they could even get the ball to Pepper – he didn’t get as many touches in this half as he did in the first.

3.  Tyree Johnson stepped up big time in the fourth quarter for Penn Wood with the 10 points.  He seems to never panic on the court no matter how frantic the game gets, and this is a great attribute for a point guard.  I am going to guess that this is one reason why Penn Wood, although trailing for most of the game, never looked flustered or down, as they took on the demeanor of their floor general. 

Free Throw:  Duane Johnson and Aaron Brown provide a great 1-2 punch inside for Penn Wood and are key to the success of the team… Pennsbury's Jesse Krasna did a good job at guard of working the ball around…


Beyond the Arc: The Pavilion was about 4/5ths full and there was a true “who’s who” of high school sports in attendance for this game... Pennsbury may have the single greatest high school pregame warmup thing I've ever seen (you know, where the guys do a sort of shuffle and slide thing...I really can't describe it well haha)

Quotes:

“We had to keep the pressure on Dalton.  He’s a good scorer, so we had to put the pressure on him; we know he’s their best ball handler, too.”
- Tyree Johnson, on a defensive key that helped lead to victory

“I thought that it was time for me to turn it up.  I started reading what they were doing on defense.  We had to push the ball at them,”
- Johnson, on how he was able to put together a strong 4th quarter

“We scrapped and played hard.  That’s all we could do.  That’s all we had in mind was to play hard.  We hadn’t won in Villanova in ever.  We just wanted to get that off our backs and we wanted to beat Pennsbury; that’s all we were worried about.”
- Penn Wood’s Aaron Brown, describing the mindset of the team and how they were able to get the victory.

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