Neshaminy completes season sweep of Abington

Abington coach Dan Marsh admitted that he fully expected his Abington squad to win the Suburban One National Conference this season.
In order to make that a possibility the Ghosts needed to win a critical rematch Neshaminy after dropping the first game in mid-December 54-42. After playing three quarters of tight back and forth ball Neshaminy opened the fourth quarter with 10-3 run, 15-4 dating back to the tail end of the third, to pull away from the Ghosts to complete the season sweep with a 57-49 win.
“We held them to five points in the first quarter and they got 52 points in three quarters,” Marsh said. “We can’t defend. We got to figure out a way to defend. For some reason we can’t dig in and get a stop. There was a stretch where they had 12 straight points where we couldn’t get a stop.”
Defensively Neshaminy came with a very effective game plan to defend the Ghosts. It packed in the middle and denied the entry passes to the Abington bigs, Lizzy O’Leary and Leah Simmons, and got physical with the Ghosts when the ball came in the paint.
“Neshaminy does a very good job of being physical and packing it in on us,” Marsh said. “They force us to shoot and we don’t make good decisions in that situation.”
While Marsh was hyper critical of his team’s defense, a credit to the Neshaminy offense as they had players step up and hit big shots in the final frame. Allison Harvey led Neshaminy with 12 fourth quarter points. She hit two three-pointers and all four of her free throws. As a team Neshaminy made 15 of 16 free throws in the fourth quarter after shooting just 50 percent through the first three quarters.
Abington now focuses its attention on its remaining six games for an at large bid in the District One AAA playoffs with the conference title now out of the question. Marsh explained his teams are usually a tough out in February however he warned if they do not get better on the defensive end that may not be the case this year.
“We’re trying, we’re going to have to get back to work and try to figure this thing out in the next six games,” Marsh said. “We’re always a tough out in February but at this point playing defense the way we do we won’t be a tough out.”’t be a tough out.”