Third quarter, turnovers doom Lower Moreland against Overbrook in PIAA-4A 1st round

BENSALEM >> The Lower Moreland boys basketball team has thrived in the third quarter all season.

After turning the ball over 13 times in the first half of their PIAA Class 4A playoff opener against Overbrook, the Lions thought they were in pretty good shape trailing by only five points.

This third quarter, however, was not kind. Overbrook outscored Lower Moreland by 21 points in the third and cruised to a 76-51 win at Bensalem High School Friday night.

“Third quarter has been our M.O. this year,” Lower Moreland coach Seth Baron said. “We’ve had great third quarters. That was not what happened tonight.

“(Overbrook gets) credit. All week in practice — with the practices we were able to get this week — one of the big points was shorter passes, high-percentage passes because this team — I said flat-out Overbrook to win they have to tip passes. They sure tipped a lot of passes tonight.”

The Panthers scored the first eight points of the third quarter to kick-start a 17-4 run to turn a 26-21 game at halftime to 43-25 in the middle of the third. Overbrook extended its lead to more than 20 points and headed to the fourth with a 55-29 advantage.

The Lions had their best offensive quarter in the fourth — scoring 22 points compared to 29 in the first three combined — but the Panthers nearly matched them with 21 points so they couldn’t make up any ground.

Lower Moreland finished the game with 26 turnovers.

“We knew how fast they were,” Baron said. “We really felt that we could handle it and we did not do that.”

Shane Cohen led the Lions in scoring with 16 points and Forrest Keys added 11.

The loss brings an end to Lower Moreland’s season.

“Phenominal season,” Baron said. “What do you want to take away from them? We won the tip-off tournament. We were league champs. Runner up in districts. Twenty-win season. Those were some of the things we stressed in the locker room there. This night was not a great night for Lower Moreland basketball, but it’s one game in what was a great year.

“We have one senior in Dan Shimon. We sent him off with a great four months of basketball. We’re pretty proud of what we accomplished this year.”

Overbrook 76, Lower Moreland 51
Lower Moreland 10 11 8 22 — 51
Overbrook 15 11 29 21 — 76
LM: Cerruci 0 0-0 0, Cohen 7 2-5 16, Himmelstein 5 0-0 10, Hutchison 0 0-0 0, Pryzbylinski 1 0-2 3, Finnegan 0 2-2 2, Amavatidas 1 0-0 2, Keys 5 1-4 11, Zoubroulis 1 0-0 2, Simon 2 0-0 5. Total 22 5-13 51.