Girls Hoops: Lady Cards Stay Alive with 41-34 Win Over CB South

With his team down five at halftime to visiting Central Bucks South and the season on the line, Upper Dublin girls basketball head coach Vincent Catanzaro laid into his players.

"I told them if you don't get hungry in there and you don't rebound the ball, and you're not diving on the floor [for loose balls], you're not going to be in there very long," Catanzaro said of his locker room speech. "And in the second half that's all we did was move, move, move. There was no standing around."

Besides moving, the Lady Cardinals also scored in the second half, erasing an 18-13 half time deficit to defeat the visiting Titans 41-34. Guard Taylor Bryant led Upper Dublin with 15 points, all but one of which came in the second half. The 1,000-point scorer had been in a funk as of late, scoring only 11 points in 10 quarters of playoff basketball before breaking out against CB South.

Bryant said Catanzaro's halftime pep talk had a little something to do with it.

"I'm the type of person where if someone is yelling at me, it gets me a little riled up, and that happened with everyone," Bryant said. "We knew the first half wasn't our best work and that we needed to come out harder, and that motivated everyone."

The game started at a slow pace, with Upper Dublin's Lauren Rothfeld hitting a 3-pointer at the 5:55 mark for the first points of the contest. The teams would trade baskets over the next six minutes to leave the Cardinals up a point, 7-6, to start the second. There, the Titans would outscore the Cardinals 12-8, led by senior Tori Steinberg, who hit back-to-back 3-pointers midway through the quarter.

With the exception of another three by Rothfeld and a nice drive by guard Cutrena Goff, the Cardinals looked lost on offense and gave up a number of uncharacteristic turnovers. Bryant, usually a steady hand at the guard position, was guilty of several walks.

"I think I wanted this game so much, that I was kind of getting out of my element and I wasn't allowing myself to do what I knew I was able to do," said Bryant of her performance in the first half.

She made up for it quickly in the second, scoring her first field goal on Upper Dublin's opening possession. After a Titans answer, Rothfeld would score inside herself, and then draw an intentional foul on the following possession, giving Upper Dublin two shots and the basketball. Rothfeld would sink both to regain the lead at 21-20.

The scoring was the beginning of an 11-1 Cardinal run, capped by a Bryant jumper that gave Upper Dublin a 26-20 lead with 1:49 to play in the quarter. After a three-pointer by CB South's Madi Vitelli, who would finish tied for a team-high with 8 points, Bryant sank a pair of free throws to give Upper Dublin a 28-23 lead heading into the fourth.

The Titans would start the the final quarter on a 5-2 run to cut the lead to two with 6:02 remaining. After Upper Dublin's Jen Myers hit a tough shot to give her team breathing room, Vitelli would again answer to return the margin to 2. After a series of empty possessions, Rothfeld gathered an offensive rebound and hit a tough jumper from the top of the paint to give the Lady Cardinals a 34-30 lead with 3:43 to play.

Rothfeld, who would finish with 13, has had a knack for hitting big shots for the Cardinals as of late, particularly from beyond the arc.

"She's as solid as they come," said Catanzaro of Rothfeld. "She probably doesn't get enough [shots], but when she does get her opportunities she's not afraid to shoot the ball. The 3-pointers are her shot, but she also made [the jumper]. That was a huge shot."

However, the Titans were far from deflated, as Vitelli hit a 3-pointer two minutes later to cut the lead to 36-33 with 1:37 to play. Upper Dublin forward-center Brianna Spector would head to the line on the next possession, making one to keep the game at two possessions.  CB South's Alysha Lofton would make one of two foul shots on the Titan's next possession, but it would be the visiting team's last points of the game. Upper Dublin hit four more foul shots down the stretch to preserve the 41-34 victory.

Upper Dublin now heads to the District 1 AAAA consolation semifinals, where a win would propel them into the ninth-place game for the district's final spot to states.

Upper Dublin scoring

Taylor Bryant: 15
Lauren Rothfeld: 13
Cutrena Goff: 6
Lauren Myers: 4
Brianna Spector: 2
Kayla McAneney: 1

Central Bucks South scoring

Madi Vitelli: 8
Tori Steinberg: 8
Alysha Lofton: 7
Shannon Senour: 4
Kate McMenamin: 4
Rachel Falkowski: 2
Lauren Mosher: 1