District 1 Class 5A girls basketball: Costly free throws doom Springfield in loss to Shanahan
SPRINGFIELD — Caydence Oswald had taken only one shot during regulation Friday night.
In overtime, the Bishop Shanahan junior guard took another crack at the rim and delivered the biggest make of her life.
Oswald drained the go-ahead 3-pointer early in OT and the No. 4 Eagles held on to defeat top-seeded Springfield, 34-29.
“If I got in my head then, I wouldn’t have been able to make that shot,” Oswald said. “I knew I needed to make it. We were in overtime so it’s definitely a little bit stressful, but I put all of my focus on making the basket. I’m glad it went in.”
Bishop Shanahan (15-8) ended Springfield’s two-year district championship reign. The Eagles will play No. 7 Villa Maria at Temple University’s Liacouras Center next Saturday.
“Even making it this far, I’m so grateful that we were able to come here and play some good basketball,” Oswald said. “A lot of our girls, we’ve been going through so many injuries this season, and we definitely are a younger team, we only have one senior, so to be able to get this far after everything that’s happened this season…”
Sophomore Abby Wolf, who hit two clutch free throws with three seconds left to seal the win, stepped in to complete Oswald’s thought.
“It kind of feels surreal,” said Wolf, who produced nine points, two assists and two steals. “We’re going to Temple. That’s just unbelievable.”
The Eagles forced OT thanks to a nifty shot by junior guard Alexa Bojko, who dribbled inside the paint and swished a pretty floater to tie the game at 29-all with less 10 seconds to go.
Springfield managed to score only four points after the third quarter. The Cougars grabbed leads of 22-16 and 25-19 thanks in large part to the shooting of Kaitlyn Kearney, who sank a pair of 3s and a long deuce to open the third period. Ultimately, what doomed Springfield was inept free-throw shooting. After going 4-for-4 in the first half, the Cougars went 2-for-13 the rest of the way. At one point they missed 10 consecutive foul shots in the second half.
“Nobody was really scoring in that second half. We had a lot of chances to make foul shots and we didn’t do it,” said forward Anabel Kreydt, who tallied six points and 11 rebounds. “We were holding them on defense. We were up with (a minute) left and that’s when we really had to hold them. We just couldn’t finish.”
Sam Blumenthal gave the Cougars fits with her defense (four blocks) and strong post-up work, particularly in the third quarter. She helped ignite Shanahan’s comeback with five of her nine points coming in the third quarter.
“We knew that if we wanted to get where we wanted to go, we’d have to come into a tough place and win against a good team,” Shanahan coach Jim Powers said. “They beat us at our place (in the regular season) so it was nice to get them back. This was a tough place and the girls never quit.”
Springfield will play No. 6 Radnor for a third time this season in a Class 5A playback Tuesday. The teams split their regular season games. Both teams have already clinched a berth to the state tournament.
“I want to see how they’re going to bounce back from a really tough loss,” Springfield coach Ky McNichol said. “This was hard for everyone to lose this in our gym the way we did, but we gave them too many chances. Credit to Shanahan for playing as well as they did down the stretch. We didn’t play well enough.”
