North Penn’s upset bid stolen by Ridley in District 1-AAAA 1st round

RIDLEY >> It would be fair to say that the No. 4 seeded Ridley had the pressure on it entering Friday’s District 1-AAAA first-round matchup with No. 29 North Penn.

For the first nine or 10 minutes of the game, Ridley had the look of team with the pressure on it as it scored only four points in the first quarter and spilled into the early going of the second quarter.

“It doesn’t matter how much I tell the team you’re playing a quality team who does a lot of good things,” Ridley coach Mike Snyder said. “You’ve got to come out ready to play and North Penn came out really sharp, really crisp and I didn’t think we did.”

The game came down to the final handful of possessions and the Knights looked to be in control with less than 30 seconds left.

Ridley, though, had some magic in it to escape with the 51-49 win.

“They fought like heck all year,” North Penn coach John Conrad said. “They fought like heck to get into the playoffs and then once we got here I think everybody in our gym believed we could win this game.”

North Penn, however, could not take full advantage of the slow Raiders start as NP managed only 11 first quarter points and could never put any distance between the two teams, which resulted in the Knights actually trailing at halftime.

The fourth quarter of the game was almost a separate entity from the first three quarters. With both teams playing staunch defense through the first three quarters, things started to open up offensively in the fourth.

“We wanted to grind it out offensively and make them work on the defensive end,” Conrad said. “Nobody could get any stops in the fourth quarter.”

In the final frame, both teams’ best players started to take over the game. Ricky Johns was the go-to option for North Penn coming down the stretch, scoring 10 of his team-high 16 points in the fourth. A lob play to Johns with 1.6 seconds left in the game fell short to end the game.

Captains Julian Wing, Ryan Bollinger and Brett Foster all came up big for the Raiders. Wing and Foster tied for the game-high with 17 points while Bollinger hit a cold-blooded three-ball with 11 seconds left that stood as the winning basket.

Wing also got a huge steal with North Penn inbounding with 24 seconds left and leading by two points. The steal and layup by Wing gave Ridley new life.

“He played a lot of playoff games and a lot of games last year,” Snyder said of Bollinger. “I don’t think shooting the three he was nervous.”