Lady Rams climb another rung with win over Lewistown

By Gordon Brunskill

- gbrunski@centredaily.com

SPRING MILLS — This was the kind of win the Penns Valley girls’ basketball team was looking to get. The offense was good, the defense was even better and Lewistown, the defending District 6 Class AAA champions, were the victim. “This is big,” said senior guard Korey McCaffrey, who scored a career-high 27 points in the 58-41 win. “It’s a great feeling. We were so pumped and we were ready for this game.”

The Lady Panthers (10-2, 6-2 Mountain League) were held to a season-low point total after an 87-33 win over Tyrone two nights earlier.

“The lid was on definitely for us,” Lewistown coach Kevin Kodish said. “It was arctic shooting for us in the second (quarter). You can’t give a good team that kind of a lead and try to come back.” McCaffrey added 12 rebounds, four assists and three steals to her ninth double-digit scoring night of the season for the Lady Rams (9-3, 6-2), who strengthened their lead in the Nittany Division of the Mountain League. Her big night followed a four-point outing against Central two nights earlier. “She beat herself up about that pretty badly,” head coach Karen McCaffrey said. “From the tap she had a determined look and rarely do I give her a compliment, but I’ll give her one here. She stepped it up for this game.”

Brittany LeVan contributed 12 points and 11 rebounds, Ella Myer scored 11 points and Rebecca Cloninger added five assists to some tenacious defense. Cloninger held Hannah Geedey, one of Lewistown’s top scorers, to just a first-quarter 3-pointer as the Lewistown junior guard fouled out midway through the fourth quarter.

“They live and die by the three,” said Korey McCaffrey, who is 69 points shy of 1,000 for her career. “We had to make sure Rebecca Cloninger was all up in Geedey’s face. She can take control of any game. Becca had amazing defense.” Brittney Zimmerman led the Lady Panthers with 12 points and Dani Rhoades added 11 points. The game turned in the second quarter, when the Lady Rams took off on an 18-2 burst. Myer scored eight points during the period and McCaffrey added five, with each hitting a big 3-pointer. A Zimmerman bucket from just inside the 3-point line accounted for Lewistown’s only points.

“(Friday) we worked on, after a shot, sprinting to the other end of the floor, getting back and getting in girls’ faces,” LeVan said. “It really helped, knowing that they were going to shoot, shoot, shoot.” The Penns Valley game plan was to force Lewistown, which plays up-tempo with tons of 3-pointers, to be patient and make at least four passes on the offensive end.

“Four passes for them is like an eternity because they’re just used to instant offense,” Karen McCaffrey said. “You could tell in their faces, in their attitudes,” LeVan said. “We were doing our job.”

The 17-point lead was down to nine by the end of the third, with an 11-2 Lady Panther run completed by a Rhoades bucket off a fast break. But after an old-fashioned 3-point play by Korey McCaffrey to open the final quarter, the margin was never again in single digits. The senior was 7-for-8 from the foul line in the final minute to ice the win.

While the Lady Rams had built a 35-18 lead at the break, nothing was taken for granted. As Karen McCaffrey told her team at halftime: “If you think that Lewistown is just going to give this game up, you are terribly wrong. Being the caliber of team they are, they are not going to quit and we have to come out in the third quarter even stronger.” The words rang in her players years the rest of the night.

“With a team like Lewistown they’re never going to go away no matter what you do,” McCaffrey said. “We came into the locker room at halftime and we knew we had to have even more intensity that we had in the first half. They could come out with anything, hit a couple shots and we’d be down.”