Gwynedd Mercy uses 2nd-half run to get by Villa Maria
LOWER GWYNEDD >> Gwynedd Mercy Academy and Villa Maria Academy were nearly inseparable on the basketball court for the first 20 minutes of Thursday night’s game at Gwynedd Mercy Academy High School. Neither team was able to build much of a lead and the teams were tied at 25 midway through the third quarter.
Then, the Monarchs took over. GMA went on an 11-0 run, started by a pair of buckets from Carly Heineman, and cruised to a 46-39 victory over their Catholic Academies League rival.
The focus for GMA (13-3, 8-1) all night was on Erica DeCandido. She used her size and athleticism to get the job done all over the court. She led the Monarchs in scoring with 18 points, blocked a couple shots, grabbed a few steals and had some nice passes to set up teammates for easy baskets.
“She’s having a fabulous season,” GMA coach Tom Lonergan said of DeCandido. “She’s just a workhorse. She just keeps working and plugging. I can’t really say anything more than that. You can see during the game when things got tight, she was trying to get the team together … She’s just been amazing for us.”
Lonergan doesn’t think that the whole team matched DeCandido’s energy and that’s what kept the game so close for so long.
“It wasn’t five girls out on the floor that played hard,” he said. “Erica is relentless and she gave it all she had for 32 minutes, but I felt she didn’t have four other players around her consistently throughout the game. I think that made a big difference in the game. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Villa. I thought they played extremely hard and played very physical. We can’t expect to go into a game like that and not play with five players and expect to have an easy contest.”
Hurricanes (8-9, 5-6) coach Kathy McCartney was happy with the way her team battled and took the blame for the 11-0 late in the third quarter that changed the game.
“I had two freshmen on the floor at that point and I think our inexperience kind of bit us a little bit,” McCartney said. “We had a couple trips on offense where we came up empty and they had a run-out layup on one. I think a little inexperience on our part, and I probably should have called a timeout and stopped the run.”
The closest Villa got after falling behind by 11 was within seven, the final score of 46-39.
Behind DeCandido, Brigit Coleman had 12 points for GMA – all from four 3-pointers.
Murrin Tague and Marissa Picinich each had 12 points for Villa. Tague also scored her points on four 3-pointers.
GMA is currently first in the league and Villa sits in fourth, meaning they are in line to face each other in the first round of the playoffs.
“If this is the best team in our league and we had them on the ropes,” McCartney said, “it speaks pretty well of us, because we’re going to be the fourth place team.”
Prior to the game, Lonergan was presented a commemorative ring for being named the 2014-15 National Federation of State High School’s Pennsylvania State Coach of the Year. Lonergan led the Monarchs to a 23-5 overall record last season, including a 12-1 mark in the Academies League. The team won its first District 1-AAA championship since 1993 and made the state playoffs for the first time since 2002.
“I’m very humbled from (the award),” Lonergan said. “An award like that is obviously not because of one person, it’s because of a village. My coaching staff is tremendous, I have great athletes. It’s the effort of all that goes on.”
