Tyler Strechay’s game-winner lifts Perk Valley over Norristown
WEST NORRITON >> Nobody is having a better week than Perk Valley forward Tyler Strechay.
After joining the 1,000-point club in a win over Upper Merion Tuesday, the Vikings put the game in his hands Thursday night at Norristown Area High School.
Kameron Parks grabbed a defensive rebound with 24 seconds remaining against Norristown and the top two teams in the Pioneer Athletic Conference Liberty Division were tied at 50. He handed off to Strechay under their own basket and everyone got out of the way.
The senior let the clock run down before taking a jumper with Norristown guard Marcus Sanford draped all over him. The high-arcing shot from left side of the free-throw line hit the front of the rim and then the backboard before falling softly through the net with one second remaining.
Perk Valley’s Ian Streeper deflected the Eagles attempted Hail Mary pass to secure a 52-50 Vikings win and split the regular season series between the two league rivals.
“Tie game, clock running down,” Strechay said. “I’ve practiced that countless times in the gym by myself getting ready for moments like that. I had the ball and he was forcing me left, so I figured I’d take it. I just found an opening in the defense and got it to go down.”
Here is Tyler Strechay’s game-winner from tonight’s game. @ValleyBoysBBall pic.twitter.com/wz6G0mfYHg
— Ed Morlock (@emor09) January 18, 2019
“Over the development of his career he’s proven that he’s got so many tools in the toolbox in terms of creating space and making shots and body control,” PV coach Michael Poysden said. “Coming off what was a really high, emotional win and reaching 1,000 on Tuesday, I felt like I was trying to tell him to shoot more. He’s a talent.”
“Strechay is such a tough player to guard one-one-one,” Norristown coach Binky Johnson said. “He really did well down the stretch closing the game out when they needed a big shot. He made the right plays and all his plays weren’t just scoring — the right passes and drawing the double teams. They did a great job executing.”
The Vikings (13-3, 6-1 PAC Liberty) started the fourth quarter with a three-point lead, 42-39, but couldn’t get anything going offensively. They didn’t score their first basket of the fourth quarter until there were less than three minutes remaining in the game.
“A team like Norristown is really capable of punching you in flurries,” Poysden said. “I think they kind of knocked us back on our heels a bit in terms of we were missing some shots, we were taking some bad shots, we missed a lot of rebounds I thought in that stretch. We gave them more looks than we were comfortable giving them at the rim.”
The Eagles (13-3, 7-1 PAC Liberty) took a 44-42 lead with 5:20 to go on a Mickeel Allen layup. Allen added another basket before an acrobatic Tyler Lyons layup put the hosts up, 48-42, with 2:50 left.
AJ Hansen went 1-for-2 from the free-throw line to give PV its first points of the fourth and on the following Vikings possession Strechay hit a three-pointer to get within two, 48-46, with 2:10 to go.
A Norristown turnover resulted in a 3-on-1 Perk Valley fast break with a chance to tie the game or take the lead. Sanford was the only Eagles player back on defense and he forced a bad shot, grabbed the rebound and got fouled. He went 1-for-2 to make it a three-point game with less than two minutes left.
Hansen and Parks made back-to-back layups to give the Vikings a one-point lead, 50-49, with less than a minute to go.
Norristown’s Allen was fouled with 24 seconds and went 1-for-2. He made the first to tie the game and the miss preceded Strechay’s game-winner.
“We made a nice run,” Johnson said. “Then I feel as though we weren’t smart with the ball down the stretch and it really hurt us. We tried to force some things and playing with the lead, I didn’t think we executed to the best of our ability, but it’s one of those things where hopefully we learn from it — playing with the lead down the stretch and how to execute and put games like this away.”
The Eagles put together an 11-0 run to turn a 26-20 late-second quarter deficit into a 31-26 lead early in the third.
With 3:30 to go in the third and Norristown ahead, 33-30 — its run at 13-4 — PV’s Hansen and Norristown’s Xavier Edwards were assessed technical fouls.
The Vikings responded with a 9-4 run — highlighted by a Strechay stepback three that gave them a 37-35 lead — before closing out the quarter with a 42-39 advantage.
“Whenever anything like that happens,” Strechay said, “whenever it gets chippy or anything is going back and forth between the teams we try to take energy from that — try to keep it positive energy and not let it compound into any more cheap fouls like that. We try to take what we can from everything.”
Strechay finished with a game-high 18 points. Zach Krause joined him in double figures with 11 — nine of which came in the first quarter — and Parks had eight.
Aaron Reddish led Norristown with 13 points. Lyons and Allen each had 11. Allen tallied a double-double, adding 11 rebounds.
The Eagles plan to play a lot of big games over the next couple months and hope this loss can serve as a learning experience.
“That’s the fun part about sports — challenges,” Johnson said. “When you’re head of the division, etc., you’ll always get everyone’s best shot and that’s what you want. I feel as though one of the things you can best measure your team by is competition. That’s why we play such a strong non-conference schedule. There is nothing greater than competition and when you’re at the head of the division you’re going to get the best out of every team. That’s what you want. I want to say that it was a really good basketball game tonight and I love the way that Perk Valley came to play and maybe we’ll see them again later down the round like we did last year.”
