Defensive mistakes doom Upper Dublin in SOL Challenge championship game
NORTHAMPTON >> One of the hardest things to do in Suburban One League girls basketball is stop Maddie Burke. The Central Bucks West senior can score at every level and routinely give defenses headaches for 32 minutes.
Upper Dublin limited her to five points Monday night. Sarah Eskew and Bliss Brenner took turns shadowing the Penn State commit and held her to 1-of-6 shooting from the field.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they couldn’t find similar success against the rest of the Bucks down the stretch in their 38-33 Suburban One League Challenge championship game loss at Council Rock High School South.
“(Eskew and Brenner) did a great job on (Burke),” Upper Dublin head coach Morgan Funsten said. “She doesn’t need a lot of room to get open and she has a great stroke. I thought they did a good job and the other girls did a good job helping. That’s one of the things – it’s not simple to stop it. It’s complicated to stop it, but some other things that happened were simple and we need to be better defensively.”
It’s the simple mistakes that frustrated Funsten and the Cardinals. They took a 33-32 lead on an Anajae Smith three-pointer before allowing the Bucks to close the game on a 6-0 run.
“When Anajae Smith made that big three to put us up one, we didn’t know what we had on defense on the way back,” Funsten said. “That’s a lack of communication, that’s a lack of focus and it’s something that can’t happen this time of year.”
Upper Dublin’s defense got off to a great start. The 2018 state champs jumped out to an 8-0 lead, allowed just four points in the first quarter and 15 in the first half and forced six turnovers in the opening 16 minutes. After halftime, they surrendered 23 points and only forced one turnover.
“They scored 38 points,” Funsten said. “That’s typically a good number, but the way they got it was disappointing.
“The defensive mistakes we made in the second half, especially, were really disappointing to be going on at this time of year. Lack of communication, lack of understanding roles of the girls on the other team – we can’t make those mistakes. I thought that we did a lot of complicated things well and some simple things really poorly. That’s what led to losing.”
The Cardinals will look to regroup before starting the District 1-6A playoffs. As the No. 8 seed they have a first-round bye before starting the postseason Wednesday Feb. 19 against the winner of No. 9 Downingtown East and No. 24 Upper Darby.
