Quinn, Cardinal O’Hara do what’s needed to hand Lansdale Catholic first PCL loss
LANSDALE >> The margin between a win and a loss at the top of the Philadelphia Catholic League can be decided in a split-second.
Joanie Quinn, for instance, knew she didn’t have a lot of time to get in front of Lansdale Catholic’s Gabby Casey charging to the rim, set her feet and wait for the inevitable collision to occur. Yet, that’s exactly what the Cardinal O’Hara junior chose to do, the Lions clinging to a two-point lead over a Crusaders team that had yet to lose in league play.
Quinn got there, got set and got the charge, one last winning play in a game full of them as O’Hara edged LC 53-51 Thursday night, creating more chaos atop the PCL table.
“We knew we needed to do the little things,” Quinn said. “We couldn’t let them score. Our defense is what we were focused on coming in. We had to be aggressive and we needed to be physical.
“Every game in the Catholic League is physical. We needed to be able to take a hit.”
Rullo misses the one and one. Casey rebounds and pushes, Quinn gets in and draws the offensive foul with :01 left Q4
OHara ball up 53-51 pic.twitter.com/Gk1j1cli8r— Andrew Robinson (@ADRobinson3) February 3, 2023
Thursday’s tilt was the start of another grueling end to PCL play for Lansdale Catholic, with the Crusaders going on the road to current PCL leader Archbishop Wood (8-0 league) and an Archbishop Carroll (6-2 league) team looking to secure a top-four seed next week. In a game that featured plenty of physicality and fouls — the officials tagged the two teams for a combined 19 in the first half alone — LC could tally any number of the little things that aided in their setback.
Certainly, the hosts battled foul trouble all night but as coach Eric Gidney said, they didn’t help themselves much either. Quinn and Molly Rullo just got the job done on both ends in the first half, Quinn going for 11 of her 16 points in the first including a buzzer-beating three while Rullo tallied 15 of her 20 by halftime.
“We knew a couple things coming into this game. One, it was going to be a battle and two, Quinn and Rullo were the two we really needed to key on,” Gidney said. “We had to really get ourselves in position to help and anticipate and we just didn’t do a really good job of that in the first half. They ran a lot of sets that got wide-open layups.”
Defensively, the Lions were locked in. Rullo, who spent much of the game guarding Casey, said her team did not want to let the Crusaders get out and start the kind of rampaging offensive attack that had downed so many foes this season.
The best way to do that was to keep the ball from getting to LC’s cutters and slashers cleanly. Gidney noted the Lions’ ability to accelerate into passing lanes and to that end, O’Hara recorded 11 steals while tipping or deflecting plenty of others with one of those steals coming from Quinn late in the fourth quarter denying LC a chance to take the lead.
“We know (Casey) is a great player and she’s going to be able to get her points, so we were trying to keep her in front of us and contain her enough that she couldn’t physically destroy us like she does everyone else,” Rullo said. “Knowing what a team’s strengths and weaknesses are and making them play to their weaknesses helps.”
O’Hara led by five after a quarter thanks to Quinn’s buzzer-beater and had leads of nine and eight points in the second before Lansdale Catholic cut it to 30-27 with 2:33 to play in the half. The rest of the quarter was serenaded by whistles as the Lions got into the bonus but couldn’t make much of it, going just 1-of-7 at the foul line to settle for a 31-27 halftime lead.
The home crowd would have disagreed, with starters Jaida Helm, Saniyah Littlejohn and Olivia Boccella all whistled for three fouls by intermission, but the whistles didn’t spare O’Hara who saw Greata Miller, Carly Coleman and Rullo all pick up two before the break.
LC, which went 0-3 against O’Hara, Wood and Carroll to close PCL play last season did turn that into a run to the PIAA 4A title game, something Gidney noted on Thursday. With the crowd more and more displeased with each call going against the Crusaders, the coaches told the team not to focus on that, but instead the slow rotations or telegraphed passes that had added up to putting O’Hara ahead 12 points going to the fourth quarter.
“I think that was a good test for us and will pay dividends for us here coming through this stretch for the next week-and-a-half,” Gidney said. “One of the things I said to the girls, whether anybody in the gym agrees or disagrees with the calls made in the game, not just at the end but all 32 minutes, we’ve just got to be better. We put ourselves in that position.”
With LC focused on slowing Rullo after halftime, Greta Miller stepped up mightily for the Lions. The junior guard scored all nine of her points after halftime on a trio of three-point shots, the second coming off a Quinn dish in the final seconds of the third and her last off a Bridget Dawson feed for a 50-41 lead with 5:23 to play.
Cardinal O’Hara needed every one of those shots as LC, more specifically Littlejohn, took over. The Crusaders sophomore shook off her foul-plagued first half and went on the attack over and over again, scoring 10 of LC’s final 12 points to cut the visitors’ lead to 52-51 with 1:55 to play and finishing with 20 points on the night.
“We ran a lot of our isolation sets for her in the fourth quarter and one thing we didn’t do well tonight was exploit their switches,” Gidney said. “That’s really what got us in it, it wasn’t the three, it was ‘let’s exploit mismatches,’ and Saniyah is a mismatch for almost anybody so why not do that?”
Asked how her team kept its composure late, Quinn laughed and said she wasn’t really sure it had but the Lions made enough plays late to never fall behind. Quinn’s steal was huge with about 1:23 left and she split a pair of foul shots to make it a two-point game with :19 on the clock.
Littlejohn nearly tied it after, going hard to the rim but her shot painfully not falling in with Rullo eventually securing the board. Just to keep it interesting, Rullo was off on the first of her one-and-one, putting the ball in Casey’s hands building a full head of steam going to the rim with Quinn a couple paces in front.
The crash came with one second on the clock, the official calling for the offensive foul as Casey’s shot went through the net and securing a big, but not-too big, win for O’Hara.
“Everybody on the court is a leader and we all want to be leaders, so we knew we had to band together,” Quinn said. “It’s a good win but it’s small in the bigger picture, we play Penn Charter (Friday). We can’t get too high after wins and we can’t get too low after losses, so that’s what we need to do.
“That’s what basketball is.”
Cardinal O’Hara 53, Lansdale Catholic 51
Cardinal O’Hara 20 11 16 6 — 53
Lansdale Catholic 15 12 8 16 — 51
Cardinal O’Hara: Greta Miller 3 0-2 9, Joanie Quinn 5 4-6 16, Carly Coleman 2 4-4 8, Molly Rullo 9 0-1 20, Bridget Dawson 0 0-1 0. Totals: 19 8-14 53
Lansdale Catholic: Saniyah Littlejohn 8 4-6 20, Nadia Yemola 2 0-1 4, Olivia Boccella 2 1-2 7, Gabby Casey 6 4-5 16, Aubrey Mobley 0 2-2 2, Isabella Allen 1 0-1 2. Totals: 19 11-17 51
3-pointers: CO-Miller 3, Quinn 2, Rullo 2; LC-Boccella 2.
