PENNSBURY:Falcons fall to fourth in district

Pennsbury guard Eddie DiRugeris added 12 points.

By Bill Kenny
For BucksLocalSports

NORRISTOWN — If Pennsbury High School’s loss to Norristown last Tuesday in the District One Class AAAA semifinals was a mere bump in the road toward a coveted state championship, then the Falcons fell into a full-fledged sinkhole yesterday.
Pennsbury sputtered its way through the tournament’s third-place game against Conestoga and essentially stalled for one eight-minute stretch of play on the way to a 54-52 defeat.
Conestoga’s Doug Jakiela supplied the winning bucket with three seconds to go as point guard Matt O’Hara fed a pass to the forward, who cut to the rim and converted an acrobatic lay-up.
Pennsbury’s Dalton Pepper then missed a half-court shot at the buzzer. He finished with a game-high 22 points, including nine in the fourth quarter.
By finishing fourth in the district, Pennsbury will open the 32-team PIAA state tournament next Saturday against Philadelphia’s Northeast Catholic, the third-place team from District 12, at a time and location to be announced.
The final sequence ended a see-saw battle in which the fourth-seeded Falcons (22-5) led by as many as eight points early in the second quarter, only to see second-seeded Conestoga (26-3) reel off 16 in a row to end that period and open the third.
Pennsbury went the first six minutes of the second half without scoring and trailed by as many as 11 points, but rallied to tie the game four times in the final five minutes of play.
The Falcons never recaptured the lead.
For head coach Frank Sciolla, the bigger frustration lay not in the Falcons’ loss, but in how it occurred. Much like the Norristown game, Pennsbury settled for too many outside shots, the coach said.
The Falcons made 10 3-pointers, but failed to get to the basket consistently. As a result, they got outscored at the foul line and failed to get Conestoga’s big men – notably 6-foot-10 center Jake Cohen – into foul trouble.
“We spent 10 minutes at halftime saying that we have to shoot lay-ups. They had to spend three timeouts in the beginning of the second half to tell them we have to shoot lay-ups,” Sciolla said. “We were shooting threes against a team that we can get to the basket on anytime we want.”
Pepper hit four from beyond the arc and Eddie DiRugeris hit two. DiRugeris finished with 12 points.
“We know coming in that it would be difficult to score and there would be (difficult) stretches,” Sciolla said. “That would’ve been OK if we tried to execute (our offense).”
Defensively, Pennsbury allowed more than 50 points for the second straight game after doing it just six times throughout the regular season. The Falcons are 4-4 in those games.
Cohen finished with 19 points and Jakiela with 17 points. O’Hara recorded six of his seven assists after halftime.
Sciolla praised the Falcons’ mental toughness in bouncing back from their long scoreless spell.
“We were down big. We were out of it. We came back into it, but it’s still a loss,” the coach said.

Pennsbury (52)
Krasna 2-2-7, Devine 1-0-3, DiRugeris 4-2-12, Pepper 7-4-22, Marcinkowski 0-0-0, Healey 1-0-3, Dulac 1-0-2, Wolff 0-0-0, Bolger 1-0-3, Kumor 0-0-0. Totals 17-8-52.
Conestoga (54)
Scott 3-0-7, Shapiro 2-0-5, O’Hara 0-2-2, Jakiela 7-3-17, Cohen 6-7-19, Ikeda 0-0-0, Dolby 0-0-0, Scott 0-0-0, Mita 2-0-4, Marshall 0-0-0. Totals 20-12-54.

Pennsbury (22-5) 16 7 8 21-52
Conestoga (23-6) 8 18 12 16-54
3-pointers: Krasna, Devine, DiRugeris 2, Pepper 4, Healey, Bolger (P); Scott, Shapiro (C).