With ‘nothing to lose,’ Aspesi, Harriton stun Garnet Valley

LOWER MERION — Harriton High was missing its head coach for Saturday’s Central League girls playoff quarterfinal with reigning champion Garnet Valley.

Second-year Rams coach Chris Wielgus was being honored at Dartmouth College, where she coached for 28 years and won 12 Ivy league championships before taking over the Harriton program in 2018. Forty years of Dartmouth women’s basketball was celebrated at halftime of Big Green’s contest with Yale, and Wielgus was a big reason for the program’s success over the last four decades.

Back at Harriton, Wielgus’s absence left sensational sophomore guard Annie Aspesi and Co. to win one for the Gipper. With interim coach Chris Gari, the eighth-grade coach at Welsh Valley Middle School, calling the shots, the Rams pulled off an absolute shocker. Aspesi generated 31 points, three steals and two assists to propel Harriton to a 43-39 victory at Kobe Bryant Gymnasium.

“It was awesome to win this for her,” Aspesi said. “She told us before that she didn’t have to go and leave us. She is back at Dartmouth where she is being honored and she said she doesn’t want to have to choose them over us. But we all told her to go and we told her that she has done enough for us and that we can handle it and work hard.”

Oh, the Rams absolutely deserved this win. With strong, on-the-ball defense and savvy decision making on the offensive end, the Rams (12-11) gave the Jags (18-5) all they could handle Saturday.

Aspesi, meanwhile, played with a bit of a heavy heart. She missed Thursday’s game against Marple Newtown, which the Rams won without her to earn a spot in the six-team Central League tourney, to visit her ailing grandmother, whom she is named after. After the game, Annie’s father noted that her daughter dedicated the win to her grandmom.

Ms. Annie Woo would have been proud of her granddaughter’s performance. Aspesi was excellent and flat-out unstoppable in crunch time. She came up with two crucial steals and was 4-for-4 at the foul line in the final minute to help the Rams come out on top.

“We knew coming in that everyone was going to bet against us,” Aspesi said. “They didn’t think we had it in us to win this, but we played together as a team. We knew the game plan coming in and we worked really hard and we all played really well together.”

Garnet Valley was in for a fight from the opening tip. The Rams scored the first five points before the Jags answered with a 10-5 run to close the first quarter. The lead was one point at intermission. By the end of the third quarter, all bets were off.

Aspesi swished her fifth and final 3-point field goal to give Harriton a 28-23 early in the fourth period. Ava Possenti, who was starting in place of injured senior guard Kendall DiCamillo, hit a triple to even the score at 28-all.

But Maretta Smith canned a 3-pointer and Aspesi hit a running layup to put the Rams back in front, 33-28.

“We weren’t hitting our layups and we weren’t talking to each other the way that we should,” said Possenti, who finished with five points, all in the fourth quarter, two rebounds and one steal. “We were getting angry and frustrated.”

Senior guard/forward Abbey Anderson tallied eight points and forward/center Jess Brewer gave the Jags a big lift off the bench with five points, four rebounds and one block. Mary Rose Berry had nine points on three 3-pointers.

Aspesi made four straight foul shots – with a steal mixed in – in the final minute. She had plenty of help from Smith (three points, three steals, two assists), Lexy Calhoun (five points, two steals, one block), Mady Calhoun (four points, six rebounds) and Ava Paternoster (five rebounds).

The Rams hope to continue shocking teams in the Central League playoffs Monday night, when they take on No. 1 Springfield (6 p.m.), which went 16-0 in the conference during the regular season.

“We just have to keep our underdog mentality and we have to keep fighting,” Aspesi said. “We have nothing to lose.”