Upper Dublin shuts down Souderton in District 1-6A 5th place game

UPPER DUBLIN >> Playing games where points are at a premium is not too rare of an occurrence for the Upper Dublin girls basketball team. But even coach Morgan Funsten had to admit Friday night was a bit of an outlier for the Cardinals.

“We’ve been in low-scoring games before but we’ve never been in 9-3 at halftime,” he said. “And I said, ‘Girls you can’t look at the scoring but you have to look at is as you’re up six at halftime.’”

Upper Dublin and visiting Souderton could combine for only 12 points in the first half of their District 1-6A fifth-place contest, the Cardinals holding on to the six-point edge at the break courtesy of their 4-0 shutout of the Indians in the second quarter.

And while Sarah Eskew began the third quarter knocking down a 3-pointer off a Jess Polin assist — increasing UD’s lead to nine — the trey did not herald an scoring resurgence. Both offenses found a bit more success in the final 16 minutes, but the fifth-seeded Cardinals kept the No. 6 Indians at bay in the second half to go into the PIAA Tournament with a win as they topped Souderton 29-22.

“I don’t really care what people think about the score or whatever, we care about winning and the girls have bought into that and they’re OK with the score,” Funsten said. “I don’t know, maybe the people in the gym weren’t OK but we’re OK.”

Souderton (22-5) pulled to within 12-8 in the third after five straight points but UD responded with their on 5-0 burst — an Eskew triple followed by a basket inside from Anajae Smith — to push the Cardinals (22-5) margin back to nine. Upper Dublin had its lead up to 10 at 23-13 in the fourth before putting the game away from the foul line as the Cards’ defense frustrated the Indians for a third consecutive postseason.

“The easy answer would be for me to point to our shooting percentage and sure they were some that maybe we think should of gone in and we missed foul shots but they were very, very disruptive defensively,” Souderton coach Lynn Carroll said. “We never got into a flow, drives that we normally get we couldn’t get because Jackie Vargas was there. I thought their on-the-ball defenders were very, very good. We have some quick kids that typically get by a lot of defenders and we couldn’t do that tonight.”

“It was the kind of game they wanted to play — low scoring. I thought we did OK defensively and I’m certainly happy with the effort and how they kids kept fighting at the end there.”

Eskew scored eight points in the third and finished with a team-high nine for UD as the defending PIAA-6A champs held an opponent to 22 points or less for the 13th times this season to earn fifth place and a matchup with District 3 third-place finisher Central Dauphin in the first round of states. Souderton at sixth takes on District 11 runner-up Freedom. Both games are to be played Friday with sites and times to be announced.

“Last year when we played them, too, it was a low-scoring game,” said Polin, who chipped in five points — all coming from the foul line in the fourth. “I think it’s just for us and them we’re really trying to work on our defense and our thing tonight was get stops after we score and I think our team did a really great job of communicating and getting stops. I just think both teams played really great defense and didn’t really let anything up on offense.”

Upper Dublin edged Souderton 26-25 in last year’s state semifinal while in 2017 the Cardinals bested the Indians 34-30 in the District 1-6A ninth-place semifinals.

“I would say we’re similar teams and we pride ourselves on similar things,” Funsten said. “And I think both of us, you would say if you’re playing either one of our teams you would say you’re not going to get anything else. They’re not going to give you anything else, they’re going to take away what you do well. And when you have two teams that both believe that and we try to take away what they do well, they try to take away what we do well, every once in a while you’re going to get a game that is this low scoring.”

Mikaela Reese connected on a pair of 3-pointers in scoring seven of her team-high nine points in the second half for Souderton, which was held to under 30 points for the third time this season — Big Red losing all three.

“It was a like rec league halftime score,” Carroll said. “At halftime, you kind of had to make sure that the important thing is we were only down six and missed almost everything but it felt like much worse and I think we started taking some desperation shots. I mean, we so desperately wanted to put points on the board and they weren’t coming easy. I mean there was a lot of good defense first half and I thought our kids really defended well in the first half. In the second half, every little mistake we made defensively they capitalized.”

After Eskew’s triple put Upper Dublin up 12-3 in the third, a Curran O’Donnell basket and a three from Megan Bealer had the Indians down four. Eskew, answered with another three while Vargas fed Smith inside for a layup for a 17-8 lead.

“Coming into this game, I think we all had a lot of energy and everyone was just picking each other up,” Polin said. “Our thing this year is to get a stop after a score and we were just saying every time we scored, we just said ‘Get a stop, get a stop.’ And I think we all just communicated really well.”

Eskew scored on a drive to put the Cards up 19-11 before Reese’s buzzer-beater off an inbounds had Big Red within six going to the fourth.

A Vargas putback and Bliss Brenner connecting on both ends of a 1-and-1 gave Upper Dublin a 23-13 advantage with 3:33 remaining. Souderton cut its deficit in half with a 7-2 run —  six from Reese, the junior’s three making it 25-20. But Polin converted a pair from the line at 54.4 seconds then added another free throw at 33.4 seconds to extend the UD lead to eight.

The Cardinals never trailed after a Dayna Balasa three made it 3-0 in the first quarter. Megan Walbrandt collected Souderton’s lone field goal of the first half with a baseline runner before two Kara Grebe free throws had UD up 5-2 at 1:49. Reese’s free throw 32 seconds later made it 5-3.

A basket by Grebe and two Vargas free throws at 2:15 accounted for all the scoring in the second quarter to give the Cardinals the 9-3 halftime lead.

Upper Dublin 29, Souderton 22
Souderton          3 0 10 9 — 22
Upper Dublin 5 4 10 10 —29
Souderton: Mikaela Reese 3 1-2 9; Megan Bealer 2 0-1 6; Megan Walbrandt 2 0-0 4; Curran O’Donnell 1 1-2 3; Olivia Schneider 0 0-2 0; Totals 8 2-7 22.
Upper Dublin: Sarah Eskew 3 1-2 9; Jess Polin 0 5-6 5; Kara Grebe 1 2-4 4; Jackie Vargas 1 2-2 4;  Dayna Balasa 1 0-1 3; Bliss Brenner 0 2-4 2; Anajae Smith 1 0-0 2; Totals 7 12-19 29.
3-pointers: S-Bealer 2, Reese 2; UD-Eskew 2, Balasa.