Lowellville, McDonald advance to championship game in Div. IV

By Greg Gulas

HUBBARD — When asked if he thought that his young team would be playing for the district title, Lowellville coach Tony Matisi admits he’d be lying if he answered yes.

By virtue of their 56-42 win over Leetonia Thursday in the Division IV district semifinals at Hubbard High School, the Rockets set the stage for a showdown with defending district champion McDonald at 2 p.m. Saturday, a team that they defeated twice during the regular season.

“We’ve gotten better and better each and every practice; each and every game,” said Matisi. “This team, while young, walks away from practice having improved on some aspect of their game and I mean they do that every single practice.

“The players make it fun for the coaches to come out and work with them. They make it special to coach them,” Matisi added.

Emily Carlson scored 16 points while Taylor Hvisdak added 15, the two freshmen combining for 31 of their team’s 56 points to lift the Rockets to their third win over the Bears (10-12) this season.

“We might be young, yet we don’t look at ourselves as freshmen because we’ve been playing together for the past seven or eight seasons,” said Carlson. “We work well as a unit, pass the ball to the open player and always seem to know each others moves before they make them.”

Lowellville scored the first seven points of the game, racing to a 15-8 first-quarter advantage and never looked back as they won for the 19th time in 23 outings.

They built a 29-17 halftime advantage and then held the Bears to just three field goals in the third quarter.

Carlson scored five of her points in the third period as the Rockets built a commanding 42-23 lead.

Hvisdak then scored nine of her 15 points in the final stanza and Lowellville held on for the victory despite being outscored, 19-14 in the final session.

Matisi won’t make many changes as he prepares for McDonald on Saturday. It’s almost as if it should be billed as a mutual admiration title game between the two Inter Tri-County League Tier Two rivals.

“We’ll just keep doing what we’ve done all season long, but we’ll have to be on our toes the entire game if we expect to win,” said Matisi.

“It’s a friendly, intense but very respectful rivalry between our two programs, which is why it is exciting when these two teams meet. Coach [Rob] Hilbun has done an excellent job with the Blue Devils program,” he added.

Lowellville won the two regular-season games against McDonald, 53-48 on the road on Jan. 8 and 65-41 at home on Feb. 5.

In the first game on Thursday, McDonald (16-6) was led by Joh’Vonnie Mosley’s 31 points and rallied from a 40-33 deficit in the third period to post a 62-54 win over Bristol.

Eden Dulka had a team-high 15 points for Bristol (8-14).

“Joh’Vonnie has been great for us all season long and has stepped up her game in tournament play,” said Hilbun. “We struggled shooting, but we knew that Bristol would collapse on us so it was great to see Joh’Vonnie come up big when we needed her most.”

Mosley scored 19 points in the first half while Lindsay Repp was the only other McDonald player in double figures, adding 11 points.

Alyssa Giesy also had 10 points for Bristol, of the Northeastern Athletic Conference.