WZAR News

By Phil Haddad

This game was a do or dies game, and the winner continues their quest to make the state AAAA playoffs. The loser goes home. Their season would be over. There was a lot riding for both the Lady Bears from Boyertown and the Lady Cardinals from Upper Dublin.

Boyertown had a lot to prove in this game after a devastating 25-23 loss to Great Valley last Wednesday night. The Lady Bears were unable to get their offense going, and their shooting shot a horrid 18% from the field. The Lady Bears gave up four points in the last five seconds of the game.Tonight the Lady Bears came out with a purpose, and totally dominated and got a 61-23 victory. They now face the winner of the Spring-Ford-Lower Merion game Wednesday night at Boyertown.

“We talked about playing more of a five person game and getting everyone involved,” said head coach Jason Bieber. “We wanted to play well, and we did that. Our girls came out a little angry and prove that we belong and they definitely did that.”

Junior guard, Kelly Furman, wasn’t surprised with how well she and her teammates came out tonight and took it to Upper Dublin. “I had a feeling after the loss on Wednesday that we were going to come together closer than ever,” said Furman.  “We didn’t want our season to end. We played for the seniors and for everyone and we just wanted it more than Upper Dublin.”
Boyertown came out in a 2-3 zone, forcing Upper Dublin to make bad passes. Senior Lauren Walker, hit a three point shot to open up the scoring. Junior Kelly Furman hit a three point shot and went 2-4 from the foul line in the quarter. Junior guard Jess Schlesman got a steal and a bucket along with hitting a foul shot to get into the act scoring. When the first quarter ended, it was Boyertown with a 13-2 lead.   The second quarter the Boyertown defense continued to force turnovers and poor shooting from the Lady Cardinals. The Lady Bears got balanced scoring from Jess Schlesman, Brooke Fisher, Brooke Mullen, Kelly Furman. Furman had two three point shots and five points for the quarter. The Lady Bears used their speed and Schlesman got four points thanks to steals and running the fast break. Boyertown extended their lead at halftime to 29-12 at intermission.

Although the Lady Bears did shoot well from the foul line shooting 9-16 (56%) in the first half. That was a bit of a concern for Coach Bieber. That’s something that he knows that they need to improve upon if they want to extend their season.

“We ended up 10-21 (48%) for the game,” said Bieber. “If we want to continue to advance, we can’t keep doing that. We need to do better with that, foul shooting and rebounding. If we don’t do better with those things, it will hurt us in the long run.”

The third quarter began with the Boyertown defense continuing to wreak havoc and shutdown the Lady Cardinals on offense. Boyertown got balanced scoring from their staring five and Kaitlyn Eisenhard had six of the team’s 17 points in the quarter. The other freshman, Brooke Mullen had four points, along with a three point shot from Fisher, a field goal by Schlesman and a field goal by Furman. When the quarter ended Boyertown extended their lead by 25 points 46-21.

The Lady Bears shot the three point shot much better tonight hitting 7-10 (70%) tonight a far cry from their last game, where nothing would drop for them. They practiced yesterday along with having a shoot around today before their game. The coaches were hoping that the players would get back in rhythm and start to see their shots drop. “When you’re an outside shooting team, you are going to have bad nights,” said Bieber. “We don’t expect to shoot 18% like we did against Great Valley. Tonight was one of those nights where everything was dropping for us.”

“We haven’t had a good game in a while, but we played the five people on the court,” said  Furman. “We played a good game  and we felt that helped. Our coaches knew that we needed to step up on offense because we haven’t played well in a while.”

The fourth quarter saw the Boyertown defense pitch a shut out, for most of the quarter before Leah Ellert scored the lone basket for the Lady Cardinals. Boyertown continued to get balanced scoring as Furman, Eisenhard scored a bucket each and Lauren Walker hit a three point shot. The Lady Bears got four points from Kaley Snyder and Krista Schauder scoring four points each. When the final buzzer blew Boyertown came away with a convincing 61-23 victory.

The defense came up big all game, and caused a lot of problems for Upper Dublin. There was only one team that scored over 30 points on Boyertown all season, so their defensive effort has been strong all season. “They played great defense and #23 (Kristen Furey) was a 1000 point scorer for them and is going to Holy Cross next year,” said Bieber. “We shut her down.

“We were also concerned about number three (Curtiena Goff) and number five (Taylor Bryant) driving to the basket. We did a really nice job playing defense. The one thing that hurt us is that we didn’t box out really well. That’s how they got some of their baskets on second and third chances.”

Bieber will admit that he wasn’t sure how his team would react to the Wednesday loss, but they definitely proved that they belonged in the playoffs. “They came in the last two days, and they were kind of energized and they really wanted to prove a point,” said Bieber. “They want to get to the state playoffs, and we have two more games that we need to win. It’s not going to get any easier, but I think we can beat anybody if we play like we did tonight. I don’t care who we play. We’re back in the way that we can beat anybody.”

Furman and her teammates know that Lower Merion or Spring-Ford will be a tough game no matter who they end up playing. “We’ll see how they (Lower Merion) plays against Spring-Ford, and how Spring-Ford plays against Lower Merion,” said Furman. “If we come out like we did tonight, we’ll have a good chance of winning.

Phil Haddad is a free lance writer and all comments can be sent to sports@wzartv.com.