Archbishop Wood’s defense hounds Upper Dublin in showcase win

WARMINSTER >> Archbishop Wood’s girls basketball team was ready for Saturday.

The Vikings, who are used to playing nationally-ranked teams in their usual gauntlet of a nonleague slate, still saw plenty of reason to be fired up with Upper Dublin visiting as part of the Diane Mosco Foundation showcase. UD, the defending 6A state champion, was the kind of test a young Wood team wanted early in the season.

Wood was ready, but the Cardinals weren’t quite as ready as an aggressive Vikings defense led Wood to a 57-34 win.

“They do a great job of pressuring, we expected them to pressure us and we just didn’t handle it well,” UD coach Morgan Funsten said. “You have to play at a quicker pace but mentally, the game needs to slow down and for us, mentally the game sped up and when you play a fast mental game, you’re going to have bad decisions and a lot of turnovers.”

Wood sophomore Kaitlyn Orihel came up as AAU teammates with UD’s Dayna Balasa and Jess Polin, so she was extra excited for Saturday’s contest. The first team All-PCL guard certainly played like it, tying Lindsay Tretter for the team lead with 16 points and proving a general menace on defense with four steals to go with three boards and two assists.

Tretter, a junior in her first season as a starter, was really good herself and was a key catalyst in Wood’s early surge to put UD on its heels. The guard scored 10 points in the first quarter, drilling a pair of 3-pointers in the frame as Wood went on an 11-0 run following Polin’s foul shots to open the scoring.

“Coach Mike (McDonald) told us to go out there and have a killer instinct,” Tretter said. “He wanted us to be aggressive and not let them breathe, so that’s what we did, we went out and pressured them the entire time.”

“We saw how they reacted to our defense in the first quarter so we knew we had to keep that up,” Orihel added. “We knew they were the 6A state champs last year and us not winning (5A) states last year, we wanted to make a statement with a win over them.”

Wood was suffocating in the first half, holding UD to just two field goals for five points with everything else the Cardinals got coming from the foul line.

Funsten was disappointed his team wasn’t up for the challenge on Saturday and felt his defense, usually a staple for UD, didn’t do well to limit Wood. The offense wasn’t helping, with Tretter poking away three steals and turning another deflection into an Orihel steal in the second quarter, but even Wood’s set offense usually netted a quality look.

“The score wasn’t a fluke in that they were that much better than us tonight,” Funsten said. “We need to learn from it and that’s what the girls talked about afterwards that we can’t be making the same mistake twice. It happened today and we can’t repeat those mistakes.”

The Cardinals have the luxury of returning most of last season’s state title team but at the same time, it’s also something they will have to deal with every game. Every team they face is going to circle the Upper Dublin game on their calendar and with a starting lineup that’s all sophomores or juniors, the Cardinals will have to deal with that nightly.

“We knew this season had the potential to be the most miserable season you could ever imagine,” Funsten said. “We’re trying to enjoy ourselves, which is really hard to do because you can’t top last year. The girls are in a tough spot, we’re trying to get better every day and preach it. You know it’s in the back of their heads and you know it’s the back of the heads of every team we play and it’s new territory for everyone including me.”

Orihel stepped up her play in the third quarter, racking up three steals in the period while freshman Brianna Bowen provided a physical force down low with three rebounds. Replacing three starters and introducing two freshmen into the rotation was going to take time, but Orihel and Tretter both feel the Vikings are further along than they expected to be.

Wood heads out to Arizona this week for its annual trip to play in Nike’s Tournament of Champions, so going away with a win was a nice sendoff.

“At practice, we we’re working hard every day and helping each out on the floor because of some of us are still learning all of it,” Tretter said. “We’re talking to each other the whole time and encouraging each other.”

“Playing last year, I know it’s important to be talking to the freshmen, they don’t know where to go all the time so you just have to help them through it,” Orihel, who played the role of conductor offensively, said. “They have a positive attitude already and they want to listen.”

The Cardinals don’t have much time to relax either, with SOL American games against Cheltenham (Tuesday) and Abington (Thursday) up this week. It is UD’s first meeting with Abington since the Galloping Ghosts switched to the American and since UD ended Abington’s season in the state quarterfinals last year.

Wood’s effort wasn’t a surprise to Funsten and his biggest regret was that there wouldn’t be another chance for his team to see the Vikings again and give them a better game.

“I would describe them as hungry,” Funsten said of Wood “We just came expecting a regular old basketball game and they came hungry today.”

ARCHBISHOP WOOD 17 17 11 12 – 57

UPPER DUBLIN 7 5 9 13 – 34

AW: Kaitlyn Orihel 6 4-6 16, Ryleigh Parsons 1 0-0 2, Ryanne Allen 3 2-2 10, Annie Whalen 2 1-2 6, Lindsay Tretter 5 3-4 16, Noelle Baxter 1 0-0 2, Brianna Bowen 2 0-0 5. Totals: 20 10-14 57

UPPER DUBLIN: Jess Polin 0 4-4 4, Kara Grebe 2 1-1 6, Sarah Eskew 2 0-1 5, Jackie Vargas 2 4-6 8, Anajae Smith 1 2-3 4, Meghan Barbera 1 0-2 3, Jackie Gorman 1 2-2 4. Totals: 9 13-19 34

3-pointers: AW – Tretter 3, Allen 2, Whalen, Bowen; UD – Grebe, Eskew, Barbera