North Penn defense turns the tide against Mount St. Joe’s

TOWAMENCIN >> If there were any open doors, North Penn slammed them all shut.

“We stepped up our defense 200 times what we played in the first half,” the Knights’ Brianna Hewlett said after Wednesday night’s victory over Mount St. Joe’s. “That just fed into our offense and helped us break the game wide open.”
An epic third quarter, in which the Knights outscored the visiting Magic by an overwhelming margin of 30-5, fueled a satisfying 78-50 non-league victory for North Penn, which ran its unbeaten record to 3-0.
“The team defense is amazing,” said Hewlett. “We play so well together. It really helps when we’re talking, playing together, just like we know how to.”
Hewlett scored the first six points of the third in barely 10 seconds, converting a pair of Magic turnovers into baskets. Later on, she helped end the dominant eight-minute stretch by making another steal around midcourt and taking it all the way in, as North Penn’s lead ballooned to 62-37, the Knights putting this one firmly in the win column.
“In the first half, we just weren’t playing fundamentally-sound defense and we gave up too many offensive rebounds,” Knights coach Maggie deMarteleire said. “We scored a lot of points but we missed a lot of shots. The biggest thing was that we weren’t doing what we normally do on defense.
“(At halftime) we talked about just playing sound defense the way we teach it and I thought the kids just did an outstanding job in the third quarter.”
Its transition game looking more polished than it did in the opening two games, North Penn heads into Friday night’s Suburban One League Continental Conference home showdown against Central Bucks West with plenty of steam.
On Wednesday night against Mount, the Knights were stifling at one end of the court, and unselfish at the other.
Hewlett scored 18 points for the Knights, Irisa Ye led the way with 22, and Jess Huber — whose drive to the basket pushed the margin to 50-35 and helped NP continue its run — added 12. Sam Carangi, the main focus for Mount defensively, calmly sank nine of 10 free throws and finished with 13 points, as a total of four Knights reached double figures.
Fittingly, all four contributed heavily in the pivotal third.
“It was just an outstanding quarter,” deMarteleire said. “Obviously you’re not gonna play that way all the time but we should be able to play close to that all the time.”
The versatility of Hewlett had the Knights out to a strong start in the first quarter. Scoring off a rebound and later finishing on the fast break, Hewlett got North Penn out to a 6-2 lead and later connected on a three from the top of the arc, breaking a 10-10 tie.
The Knights stretched their lead to double digits in the second quarter, as Huber began to heat up. She hit a three from the top to make it an 18-14 Knights advantage then scored on an underhanded layup to stretch the margin to eight.
A fast break triggered by a Mia Melchior steal led to a Melchior-to-Carangi-to-Huber fast break, putting the Knights ahead 27-17.
Mount closed the gap however, making it a 35-32 score at the break, using multiple drives to the hoop by Sarah Rothenberg (18 pts).
“Everything that we practice, everything that we represent was exactly what we did in that first half,” Magic coach Claire Perry said. “So the conversation was ‘how did that not continue? And what we can do to prevent that from happening again.’
“It was a great first half. We were down and we fought our way back. So we’re gonna use that as a lesson moving forward.”
Mount (2-2) hosts Council Rock North Saturday before opening Catholic Academies League play at Saint Basil Academy on Tuesday.