Spring-Ford’s youngsters shine on night White breaks OJR’s scoring mark

ROYERSFORD >> The Spring-Ford girls basketball team knows it’s best basketball will be in the years to come.

With four sophomores and one junior in the starting lineup, and only a single senior on the roster the Rams have plenty of time to grow into a true championship contender.

However, the Spring-Ford’s youngsters play with a swagger and confidence that show their present form can be pretty dangerous as well.

After a slow start, the Rams ran away with a 68-41 win in a Pioneer Athletic Conference Liberty Division matchup with Owen J. Roberts to close league play on Thursday, spoiling a historic night for Wildcats’ senior Avery White, who became her program’s all-time leading scorer.

“The future years and this year, I think we’re a really strong group,” Spring-Ford sophomore Mac Pettinelli said. “We obviously have a lot more connections to be making and a lot of bonds and little things that we have to get down. But through next year and probably our senior year, we’re going to be a really tight-knit core group.”

.@GbbFord’s Mac Pettinelli, left, and Aaliyah Solliday helped spark the Rams to a win over Owen J. Roberts on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/1EGBpwiJZd

— Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue) February 4, 2022

 

White scored a game-high 24 points, helping the Wildcats (12-8, 7-6 PAC, 4-6 Liberty) out to an early lead, but a 19-3 run by Spring-Ford (15-5, 10-3 PAC, 7-3 Liberty) to close the second quarter and a pair of threes by Rams’ sophomores Katie Tiffan and Siena Miller to open the third doomed OJR.

Spring-Ford junior forward Megan Robbins had a big night for the Rams, scoring a team-high 15 points against an undersized Wildcats group. Sophomore guards Anna Azzara and Pettinelli followed with 14 and 11 points, respectively.

Sophomore guard Aaliyah Solliday was a spark off the bench, knocking down a pair of 3-point shots in the first quarter to ignite a stagnant Spring-Ford offense. She gave the Rams a 14-13 lead with a buzzer beater at the end of the first quarter and not long after the Rams were off to the races.

Spring-Ford combined for 43 points in the second and third quarters — an example of what the Rams look like when at their best.

“We’re more of an athletic team, so if we push the ball up we get more open looks,” Solliday said. “Some teams are slower in transition, and we’re one of the better teams in transition where we get most of our points from.”

The young Rams went through a big part of their maturation process on Tuesday night when they went toe-to-toe to PAC front-runner Methacton before ultimately falling 47-44.

They hope the costly errors made in the final moments of the rivalry defeat will prove beneficial when many Rams get their first postseason experience next week in the PAC Final Six.

“We had it, but got a little sloppy in the end,” Solliday said of Tuesday’s loss. “But that’s OK, we got it next time.”

With Perkiomen Valley’s win over Methacton on Thursday, the Rams ended the regular season as the PAC’s No. 5 seed and OJR as the league’s No. 6 seed for the PAC Final Six, which begins next Thursday at Spring-Ford. The Rams will play No. 4 seed Upper Perkiomen and the Wildcats will face No. 3 seed Perkiomen Valley.

Pettinelli and Azzara are the only members of the rotation back from last year’s run to the PIAA championship game. There were no PAC playoffs last year, so even they will get their first taste of the league postseason.

The four-time defending PAC champs won’t enter the tournament as the favorites for the first time in a long time, but the young group with nothing to lose has already proved itself dangerous if it can continue to do some fine tuning.

“As long as we clean up some of the little stuff, then we can probably make it pretty far in PACs,” Pettinelli said.

White makes more OJR history

Owen J. Roberts senior Avery White entered Thursday night’s game 13 points shy of the school’s all-time mark.

With a pull-up jumper in the second quarter, White surpassed 2020 OJR grad Olivia Leclaire’s 1,250 for first on the list.

“It’s pretty cool,” White said. “It’s obviously a big moment, but I wouldn’t be here without my teammates, and I appreciate all of them. They’ve played just as much of a role as me getting this. Obviously it’s not the night we wanted, definitely not the result, but we know what to work on.”

.@OJRGirlsBBall senior and @CHC_WBB recruit Avery White became Owen J. Roberts’ all-time leading point scorer on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/rkLlyNVyiO

— Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue) February 4, 2022

 

White entered OJR with just one name on the 1,000-point banner in 1999 grad Nikki Kingston, who finished her career with 1,195 points. She had another to look up to when LeClaire joined the club and broke Kingston’s mark.

Now, future Wildcats have a third name to shoot for at the top of the list.

“You hope that’s a model,” OJR coach Jeremy Mellon said. “Like the other night when we played at home, our seventh and eighth grade girls were watching and you hope they see that and want to be like that. They want to emulate it.

“They see the name on the wall and they want to go set a sight to try and achieve that.”

White has the same hopes for the players who follow her in the program.

“Records are to break, so I hope someone breaks mine,” White said. “It wasn’t really a goal of mine. I just came in and I wanted to win and it came with the scoring. It’s obviously very cool, and I appreciate it.”

White finished the night with 1,262 career points and has at least three games left to add onto her total with non-league contests against Central Bucks South on Saturday and Villa Maria next Tuesday.

The Wildcats currently sit at No. 26 in the District 1 Class 6A power rankings — two spots out of the district playoff field — so they will need to string a few wins together in order to prolong the career of the program’s all-time points leader after wasting an opportunity on Thursday night.

“We knew this was a big game obviously,” White said. “It’s disappointing we didn’t get the result. We have two more games that we need to win and hopefully that can help us get in, so that’s what we’re pushing for right now.”