Pope John Paul II speeds up Lansdale Catholic
ROYERSFORD >> Pope John Paul II was in trouble.
The Golden Panthers had no answer for Lansdale Catholic’s bigs and it showed on the scoreboard when they trailed by seven points in a game they never led midway through the second quarter.
Then they decided to speed the game up.
PJP forced nine turnovers in the second quarter to spark an 18-0 run. The Golden Panthers carried that momentum through the second half to beat Lansdale Catholic, 60-53, Thursday night at Pope John Paul II High School.
“We tried to turn up the pressure a little bit,” PJP coach Brendan Stanton said. “They obviously have two really good big kids that are tough for us to match up with. We knew that if we let them play at their tempo they were just going to dump it inside. We wanted to try to use our small stature to our advantage and be faster and pressure them a little bit. When you get turnovers you get easy shots, you get open threes and you get layups. That’s what we tried to do and it worked out well in the second quarter.”
The Crusaders built a 21-14 in the second quarter lead thanks to 13 points from forwards Jimmy Casey and Hunter Healy.
That’s when PJP mixed up its gameplan.
The Golden Panthers scored the final 15 points of the first half to take a 29-21 advantage into the locker room. A three-pointer on the first possession of the third quarter extended their run to 18-0 and their lead to 32-21.
“We just realized we needed to be more aggressive on defense,” PJP’s Justin Green said. “We were letting them get it to the bigs. They had a height advantage and we knew we had to pressure their guards. Once we did that we were able to pick up our energy and get some transition points.”
“It was that three or four-minute stretch in the second quarter,” LC coach Joe Corbett said. “Credit to them. We had a gameplan to go inside and we had success with that. They decided to make it up-and-down a little bit more, try to create turnovers and we really struggled with that trapping and some of our passes and our ability to get open. That was the key part of the game. We just couldn’t respond after that. We kept climbing back and climbing back, but it was that part in the second quarter where we just looked lost on offense.”
Lansdale Catholic battled back into the game multiple times in the second half, but never got within a single possession.
The Crusaders cut their deficit to five, 42-37, late in the third quarter, but the Golden Panthers responded with four straight to take a 46-37 lead into the final eight minutes.
In the fourth LC got within four, 48-44, but that’s as close as it would get. The Crusaders had no problems scoring, but they couldn’t get defensive stops and PJP went 10-for-12 from the free-throw line down the stretch to maintain a multiple-possession lead until the final whistle.
“We made more of an effort to go inside,” Corbett said of the fourth quarter. “We tried to get up quicker with the ball and dump it down low. We had some good runs. We just couldn’t close that gap under four. The defense wasn’t there to get us to even.”
Green scored a team-high 18 points for PJP, Luke McCarthy had 13 and Drew McKeon added 12.
Casey led LC with a game-high 20 points and 14 rebounds. Healy added 12 points and Kellan Ward had 10.
