Undisputed: Union defends its WPIAL Class 1A crown

Mar. 3—PITTSBURGH — The Union High girls basketball team remains on top of the WPIAL Class 1A mountain.

The Lady Scots, the defending champs, held on to defeat St. Joseph, 50-43, in overtime in the WPIAL Class 1A championship at the Petersen Events Center on Saturday.

It was nothing but free throws in overtime. Union's Kylie Fruehstorfer made the first shot from the charity stripe with 3:18 left and the only point by the Lady Spartans came from Julie Spinelli at the free-throw line with 7.8 seconds left in the game. Union was 8 of 10 at the foul line in overtime and was 7 of 12 in regulation.

"Overtime (free throws), we'll take," Union coach Rob Nogay said. "I don't know about the rest of the game though. Yeah, we struggled early on. We don't get opportunities to play in gyms like this a lot. It's a little bit different to adjust to. When they counted, we knocked them down, for sure.

"We spent a lot of time on free throws in practice. I was pretty confident in the end there that the girls would step up and knock them down and they did."

This was the first appearance in the WPIAL championship for St. Joseph.

"It means so much more than the result. The history is great, the trophy is great, the community support is wonderful," Lady Spartans first-year coach Geoff Dutelle said. "To me, I just told them before the game that I love this group of girls. I do. I just feel they were going to succeed no matter who the coach was. It was a great opportunity for me to be able to work with them. But, to watch them be so close and grow even closer as the season went on...significantly more important than anything I could accomplish as a coach. I actually think they might be tighter after this loss than we were going in so we can continue to play in the state tournament because our season is not done."

Gia Richter struck first for St. Joseph on a 3-pointer within the first 30 seconds of the game. Union's Kelly Cleaver responded with two back-to-back buckets to grab a one-point lead.

Cleaver paced Union (19-5) with a game-high 25 points and contributed six rebounds.

"It feels great," Cleaver said on helping defend the WPIAL crown. "We came in here; we knew we had a lot of pressure on our backs. We started off a little bit shaky. We didn't come out the way we wanted to, but if you think back to last year, and that state run, we were down almost every single game at halftime. (Coach Nogay) told us it's nothing we weren't used to and it wasn't. We battled back and I'm so proud of my teammates in the way they knocked down shots."

Dutelle said Cleaver is "what you want in a competitor," adding, "She's a sweet kid. She'll talk to you. I was happy to see her. But, once the game starts there's nothing else going on in her life but besides what is going on there."

The Lady Spartans' Julie Spinelli tied the game at seven in the first quarter and later hit a long ball which was followed by teammate Emma Swierczewski sinking one of her own to build the lead. Spinelli paced her team with 19 points.

"It means so much," Spinelli said on making it to the championship. "We want to be role models to those younger girls on the team. We want to show them what it's like to be a leader and a positive leader. Hopefully, after we leave this season, we'll leave them with a good; positive attitude going into next year and they'll want to be like us."

St. Joseph (21-4) entered the second quarter with a 16-9 lead over the Lady Scots. The first quarter was a wake-up call for Union and they started the second with a 6-0 response.

"It felt like a heavyweight battle," Nogay said. "We knew they were going to punch and we had to take a punch and throw a punch back. It was a battle. We knew that was going to happen. We knew they were going to get a run and we felt that we would have a run. We tried to limit their run as much as we could. We knew that eventually we thought we could settle ourselves down and make a run at them...We took a pretty good one there early on and were able to battle back."

After Union's 6-0 run, Dutelle called a timeout with 3:59. Anna Kreinbrook sank a bucket for the Lady Spartans after the timeout and Union's Bella Cameron responded with a 3-pointer.

The Lady Scots regained the ball but lost the key possession and Spinelli sank a layup and ended up at the foul line to get a freebie with 19 seconds left to keep a seven-point advantage over Union at halftime.

"We talk about trying to get to the line to settle things down. Against Aquinas, that's how we turned the second half around. We rebounded, but we got to the foul line and we got to control the tempo; get a better sense of it," Dutelle said. "That did calm us down. We weren't getting loose balls. We were trying to dribble loose balls. I think we did a pretty good job of limiting them to one shot most of the night. But, there was that little sequence where they were getting a couple extra opportunities. We know that we just can't do that. We were trying to get them to stall out and I didn't like what I saw.

"We called the timeout, we were able to regroup a little bit and then ultimately once we settled that down we were able to be plugged in defensively and then we really focused on our offense. We were hoping it would come around and it didn't when we needed it to unfortunately."

The Lady Scots were reminded of their state playoff run last season at halftime.

"That was the halftime talk for us. The majority of the state games last year on our state run, we were trailing at halftime," Nogay said. "That was the message to them at halftime that, 'Hey, we've been in this situation before. We know what we've got to do. Just stay calm. We have to go one possession at a time here and battle ourselves back and give ourselves a chance to win it at the end,' and we were able to do that.

"That's a great basketball team over there. Spinelli's a phenomenal player, Richter's good, (Anna) Kreinbrook's really good. But, we told ourselves and I told them that we had to go one possession at a time, get some stops, then we had to go down and make some shots and we were able to do that."

Union's Mia Preuhs had 14 boards in the championship game.

"Mia Preuhs is a battler," Nogay said. "She's a fiery competitor and she's willing to accept any challenge that we give her. It doesn't matter if you're six-three, if you're five-two, Mia's going to accept that challenge and she's going to do everything in her power to help the team win. Again, Mia may not show up on the scoresheet all the time, but Mia shows up on the films with her effort and the way she plays."

Union cut St. Joseph's lead to one-point in the third quarter before Maggie Bernat sank a shot at the quarter buzzer to enter the fourth with a 32-29 lead.

The game was knotted up five times in the fourth quarter before heading into overtime. Union outscored the Lady Spartans 13-10 in the fourth.

Now, Union is looking to defend its PIAA Class 1A championship it also won for the first time last season. Union will host District 9's Port Allegany (19-7) in the first round of the state playoffs 1 p.m. Saturday.

Nogay said the championship win at The Pete gives his team some momentum heading into the state playoffs.

"We have a long wait again. We don't play until Saturday," Nogay said. "Our mentality is one game at a time. The state bracket is loaded and it's one game at a time for us. We don't look ahead to anybody. To be honest with you, I couldn't even tell you who we play the winner of right now because we were concentrating on today. It's one game at a time; one practice at a time for us. We'll be ready for the next challenge. We'll get back home, enjoy this one and celebrate. We'll be ready to go and watch some film and get ready for whoever that next opponent is."