North Penn edges CB West in OT for Suburban One League title
BENSALEM >> The ball hung in the air for a fleeting second before it fell.
Sam Carangi came to meet it, yanking the orb down to her side as the foul came right away. The junior sank both at the line, putting her team up late in an extra period it didn’t need to be playing.
Challenged again, North Penn responded, finding a way to top Central Bucks West for the third time this season. The Maidens beat the Bucks 48-47 in overtime to claim the Suburban One League girls tournament title.
“I love this team, we have a lot of guts and we haven’t been playing our best basketball lately but in overtime we pulled together,” Carangi said. “In the fourth quarter we did not play our best best basketball, we couldn’t get the east buckets so we had to pull it all together.”
The game was not an offensive clinic, but both teams have had a heavy game workload over the past 10 days. So with points hard to come by, it challenged both teams in their third meeting this season. The game was as much a big moment for North Penn as it was for the Bucks.
After losing four starters off last year’s state finalist, including three to Division I basketball teams, CB West wasn’t pegged for this kind of success. Yet, each game against North Penn had been closer and closer.
“Our kids have been doing that the last two weeks,” CB West coach Terry Rakowsky said. “We played tough and you think back in that game, there are probably six plays that if we get it to roll our way, even at the end, we were that close from taking the ball and going down the other end.”
West jumped off to a good start while North Penn came out colder than a polar bear exhibit. The Maidens started just 2-of-14 from the floor as West opened up a 10-4 lead thanks to 3-pointers by Makenzie Mason and Molly Rodebaugh.
Sam Carangi settled things down for North Penn with a stop-and-pop jumper with 1:04 left in the first quarter, followed by a great ball-fake layup by Jess Huber. However West had an answer when freshman energizer Tori Abeslon got a put-back and Mason scored on a sharp cut at the buzzer when Abelson hit the senior perfectly.
North Penn was more active in the second quarter, getting to the line on its first two possessions. A bucket by Ye, followed by a layup from Huber off a crisp spin move to cut it down to one.
After an Izzy Treon hoop, the Maidens ripped off five in a row, taking a 21-19 lead on a Huber triple. West took the lead back on a Mason trey but North Penn took a one-point lead to the break on a pair of Huber foul shots.
After a back-and-forth first half, North Penn put the game’s first controlling surge together. From the 4:57 mark to the 28 second mark, the Maidens went on an 11-0 run to take a 36-26 lead. The two leading the charge for the Maidens were Ye and Giuliani, who either scored or assisted on every point in the run.
A bucket by West’s Bailey Tracey stemmed the tide with a late jumper to close the quarter. While it seemed small, as North Penn took the lead back and held a nine-point edge with 6:31 to play, the shot helped West recover and finish strong.
“It’s progress, we talk about success and being better at the end then you were at the beginning,” Rakowsky said. “We absolutely are better and hopefully we continue to do that through districts.”
West was energized by the hoop and traded body shot after body shot and cut the North Penn lead down to five. Carangi had a bucket with 6:31 to play but that was the Maidens’ last score until overtime. North Penn’s attempts to run some clock didn’t have the desired results as the Maidens made some poor decisions and couldn’t find a needed score while West kept chipping away with its two main holdovers from last year, Mason and Maggie Rakowsky, making many of the plays.
“We’ve been chipping it away,” Mason said. “We couldn’t pull it out, but we lost a bunch (12) the first time, then three points and now one point. We’re gaining more confidence going into it, some people hadn’t played as much at the beginning of the season.”
West closed the fourth on a 9-0 run, and tied the game 40-40 on a free throw by Maggie Rakowsky with 2:36 to go.
“We went through that one stretch where we were stuck on 40 forever,” Maidens coach Maggie deMarteleire said. “We were making bad decisions on offense then we were fouling them, we worked on pinching over when they drive then bailing them out with fouls. The fourth quarter got away with us but I was happy, out kids made big plays in the overtime.”
In the overtime, Rakowsky hit to put West back on top before Carangi answered to tie the game on a layup with 1:56 left. Giuliani came up with a big offensive rebound after a missed free throw that sent Huber to the line for a split, then after Carangi’s clutch rebound and foul shots, Ye rebounded a miss and after burning some clock, hit two freebies of her own with 17.8 seconds left.
Rakowsky scored at the final horn for the final margin, but North Penn had survived its latest test.
