July 3, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mount overcomes Archbishop Wood, Council Rock South
by TOM UTESCHER

?The Mount’s Jen Sabia. (Photo by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

Mount St. Joseph Academy notched another pair of summer basketball league victories last week, prevailing 32-29 in a pitched battle with Archbishop Wood on Monday, and then overcoming Council Rock South, 40-21, three nights later.

Monday’s match-up with Wood was one of the relatively rare summer bouts that features regular-season intensity, with both squads playing tough defense instead of merely ringing up points. As the Philadelphia Catholic League begins to compete in the PA Interscholastic Athletic Association in the coming academic year, Wood will play in Class AAA, the division in which Mount St. Joe is the reigning state champion.

Like the Magic, the Vikings graduated a strong crop of seniors, but in last week’s encounter they still had 6’3” St. Joseph’s University recruit Ashley Robinson, along with supporting players eager to prove themselves. Wood (which outnumbered the Mount, 14 players to seven) opened the scoring with a three-pointer, but regular field goals by MSJ’s Steph Smith (two points total), Elle Hagedorn (eight points), Mary Jo Horgan (five) and Shannon Bridges (four) forced the Vikings to call a time-out eight minutes into the fray, trailing 8-3.

Soon after that, a jump shot and a free throw by Nicole Franzen (three points) helped the Mount go up 13-6, but a few medium-range jumpers got the Vikings back in the mix. Scoring from Jen Sabia (six points total) and Maureen Gribb (four) helped spread the gap again, but once more Wood rallied, and the Magic were ahead by just one point at halftime, 20-19.

In the second stanza, the score was tied at 24, 26, and 28 points apiece, then Gribb drained a pair of free throws and Sabia drove for a lay-up that made it 32-28 with 6:20 remaining. Defense ruled the rest of the way, with a lone Wood free throw completing the final score. MSJ’s Smith, a sophomore, acquitted herself well against the older and taller Robinson, who can take over a game if allowed.

There was a smaller turnout on Thursday evening, with the Mount managing the minimum of five players, while Rock South had seven Golden Hawks on hand. At the outset, Gribb’s transition lay-up was answered by a bucket off the rebound by Council Rock, but after that the Hawks didn’t managed another field goal until the final minute of the half.

The Magic were up 13-2 at one juncture, but later in the period two jumpers, one of them a three-pointer, helped Rock reduce its deficit to seven points by halftime, 16-9. Horgan and Smith paced the Magic in an 8-2 surge early in the second half, but as the Mount appeared to tire a bit in the middle of the period, a 10-4 run brought the Hawks back within seven points once more, 28-21.