Irish steal show in the first half

By Chuck Housteau

WARREN — At one point in the second quarter it looked like the Ursuline High girls basketball team was doing layup drills.

The Irish defense had put the clamps on a good Warren Harding team and forced the Raiders into numerous turnovers. Ursuline defenders then raced easily to their basket for uncontested layups in a game that was decided by halftime.

Although this was a game for the Steel Valley Conference championship, the Irish were pretty much having their way in the first half against a Warren Harding team that was already assured of a share of the last SVC title.

Ursuline (12-7, 4-1) jumped out to a 41-7 lead at the break and cruised to the final SVC championship with a 57-30 rout of the Raiders.

“It was great to get this championship,” said Ursuline guard Lucia Petrus. “Our focus was great. We wanted to win it so bad because it was the last Steel Valley Conference championship.”

It wasn’t surprising that the Irish played well enough to capture a share of the title because they came into the contest with a seven-game winning streak but it was because of the ease with which Ursuline won.

“I thought this would be a game that would go down to the wire,” said Ursuline coach Sean Durkin. “Harding’s much better than they played in the first half.

“We were hoping to jump on them early,” Durkin said. “We’ve been doing that much better lately and we couldn’t have played a much better first half than we did.”

How good were the Irish in the first two quarters?

Ursuline limited the Raiders (16-4, 4-1) to just seven points in the first half and pitched a shutout in the second quarter, outscoring Harding 21-0.

“We been playing great transition basketball and I couldn’t have drawn it up much better than that,” Durkin said. “We thought we could turn them over a little bit and we did.

“We showed them a little bit of a different pressure early and that confused them and then we went back to our man-to-man and I think we wore them down.”

Harding coach P.J Notar said his team just had a bad game.

“We just didn’t play,” Notar said. “We came out and we just didn’t handle the pressure.

“We knew what they were going to do and they knew what we were going to do and we just fell apart. Sometimes you just have a bad game.”

Ursuline was led by a pair of freshmen, Courtney Powell and Aurielle Irizarry, along with Petrus.

Powell scored 13 points and grabbed seven rebounds while Irizarry and Petrus each tallied 10 points.

“We’re a young team,” Durkin said. “I think the girls came in loosy-goosy and Harding had all the pressure on them.”