Pine-Richland hands New Castle section loss

Jan. 13—One team was destined for a second league win Friday, while the other would suffer a third league setback.

For the Pine-Richland High boys basketball team, it walked out of the Ne-Ca-Hi Field House with a 62-49 WPIAL Section 1-6A victory over New Castle.

"The tradition at New Castle and what Coach Blundo does, it's a big game for anybody in our section to come here and play," Pine-Richland coach Bob Petcash said. "It's an awesome gym, its awesome fans and an awesome atmosphere. As a basketball guy in your section game on a Friday night at New Castle, there's nothing better than that. I'm just proud of our guys for coming out, playing hard, competing and following the game plan.

"That was pretty much it. New Castle is very solid. Look at what they did down at Central (Catholic). They had a phenomenal game and we knew that coming in."

Said New Castle coach Ralph Blundo of the loss, "I think there were two teams that were 1-2 and one team had a better focus, had been more purposeful, were more prepared, more everything than the other. That's why they had a 16-point lead on our floor at the half. I clearly didn't do a very good job of getting these guys ready to go tonight."

Pine-Richland's Zach Kenny got on a roll in the first quarter with back-to-back buckets to give his team a six-point advantage.

"I always talk about these guys just playing within themselves; not trying to do more than they can do. That's why he's playing. He has good feet, he's smart, he can play inside there," Petcash said of Kenny. "That's what I expect from him."

New Castle's Ralphie Blundo sank a 3-pointer at the first-quarter buzzer to only trail the Rams (2-2 section, 6-6 overall) by one point heading into the second.

"We played very poorly. We didn't play with much focus, intensity or grit," Blundo said. "That's disappointing. We've hung our hat on those principles for a lot of years here and frankly we haven't done that very well all year and we were really poor tonight."

Little offensive rebounding didn't do any favors for the Red Hurricane (1-3, 10-4).

"We got very few offensive rebounds," Blundo said. "All of the things that take energy, focus, toughness...we were extremely poor. Grit, extremely poor. That's tough to take."

In the beginning of the second quarter, Pine-Richland posted 14 unanswered points with eight of them being from Andrew Mendelovich. Mendelovich paced his team with 16 tallies.

"I think our biggest thing was we were patient on offense and we weren't rushing shots and we took them," Petcash said of going unanswered in the second quarter. "Andrew Mendelovich came off the bench and this was the best game of his career. He came in and gave us a big spark off the bench. He was probably a big part of that run. The guys played within themselves and that was the most important thing."

Blundo called a timeout with 2:58 remaining in the second quarter after the Rams sank 14 points with no response.

"I just felt like we weren't competing," Blundo said of the talk during the timeout. "It's so hard for me to say those words, but that's the fact. I have to take a portion of that blame. It's my job to get these kids to compete at a high level. I'm disappointed that didn't happen tonight. We'll have to move on and get ready for the next one."

The 'Canes entered halftime trailing Pine-Richland by 16 points. New Castle was either going to live by the 3-pointer or die by the 3-pointer come the third quarter.

The 'Canes netted six of its nine total 3-pointers in the third quarter, but were only able to cut Pine-Richland's lead to 10 points at the end of the period.

"I just got a little bit nervous in the second half," Petcash said. "They started making 3s. (Kyrell) Harris made a couple of 3s, (Damian) Harrison made a couple of 3s and all of a sudden that lead shrunk. This time, we weathered the storm. Early in the year, we didn't weather that storm. Basketball is a game of runs and thank God we were able to weather that storm a little bit. That made a difference."

Ralphie Blundo posted a game-high 24 points for New Castle.

Passing and execution of plays were critical for Pine-Richland's victory.

"That's something we've been really working on — trying to control the ball. Our keys to the game today were pace and keeping our turnovers down," Petcash said.

"One of the goals the team has is if they have under five turnovers I have to buy them dinner. Tonight they had six and they don't get me to buy them dinner. I told them it's not five and under. That's the biggest thing we've been working on. If we can keep our turnovers down, control passing, attack the ball in the air and just keep our spacing and cut, we're going to be fine."

Pine-Richland's defensive prowess of Doolin Stober was another key to the team's win. The 6-foot-7 center Stober created issues for New Castle in the second half.

"Doolin is a young, good, long player and we need to use his height," Petcash said. "If he plays within himself and plays with his IQ, we're going to do well. The big thing is just him controlling and attacking the ball in the air and controlling rebounds and playing within that three-foot space.

"That's going to be huge for our team."

New Castle will face Struthers (Ohio) at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Ron Galbreath Classic at Westminster College.