GIRLS BASKETBALL: Defense leads Plymouth Whitemarsh past Upper Merion

WHITEMARSH — If there’s one thing that the Plymouth Whitemarsh girls basketball team has plenty of – it’s athletes. The Colonials roster is filled with girls who play multiple sports.

They have girls who play soccer, field hockey, flag football, lacrosse and softball when it’s not basketball season. Head coach Dan Dougherty tries to use not only their athletic ability, but principles from those other sports to help on the basketball court.

What they’ve created is a high-pressure defense that makes it difficult for opposing offenses to even get the ball up the floor.

The Plymouth Whitemarsh defense was on display Monday night when it forced 33 turnovers in a 47-31 win over Upper Merion at Plymouth Whitemarhs High School.

“We have a lot of kids with athleticism,” Dougherty said. “We’re trying to teach them how to use that athleticism to up the tempo.

“One of the things we see all the time is kids struggle with communication in sports. ‘I’m going here,’ ‘I got here,’ ‘Rotate, rotate.’ It’s the same vocabulary in soccer as it is in basketball, as it is in lacrosse. Also positioning, too. You have to position yourself in soccer, you have to position yourself in lacrosse and in basketball.”

“We’ve been practicing our press for pretty much the whole season now,” PW guard Kenna Winland said. “We do it probably two hours of our practice every day and we work really hard at it. I think these past two or three games have really shown us our confidence in that. We have a bunch of soccer players, a bunch of multi-sport athletes. It’s really nice for us to have that and use our athleticism.”

AJ Avery and Grace Harvey each had three steals in the win while Winland and Eliza Meersman each had two.

“We went back to our young, immature ways,” Upper Merion coach Jen Stilwell said of the turnovers. “We lost our heads. We were as undisciplined as we can be… Insanity is just repeating the same thing and that’s what we did. We repeated the same thing over and over and over. We did not learn from our mistakes and we did not make adjustments.”

The Colonials improved to 5-0 with the win and the defense has been a big reason why. They haven’t allowed more than 40 points in a game yet this season.

In the same vein as their high-effort defense, PW was strong on the offensive glass against Upper Merion. They grabbed 11 offensive rebounds, including seven in the first quarter to help them overcome a slow start shooting from the field.

“It’s something we coach and drill,” Dougherty said. “We drill shot from here – these kids crash and this kid has back… We also practice here’s where you should crash to. That was the only way I could score as a player – to get an offensive rebound and hopefully go back up with it. I tell the girls that all the time.”

After falling behind 7-0, Plymouth Whitemarsh got on the board with 1:22 left in the opening frame when Meersman hit a pair of free throws. Those two points started a 17-2 PW run that saw the hosts take a 17-9 lead late in the first half. They went into the locker room ahead, 19-12.

Six different Colonials scored in the third quarter to extend the lead to 35-16 before closing out the win, 47-31.

Winland led a balanced scoring effort with 11 points. Avery and Meersman each added 10 points while Harvey had seven and Joslyn Perez hit a pair of three-pointers for six points.

“We do a really good job at moving the ball,” Winland said. “When we do, it’s really good and we get everyone the ball. When people are open, we give them the ball.”

“It’s been very balanced,” Dougherty said. “Kenna led us for a game, AJ led us for a game, Eliza has led us for a game. It’s been very balanced. I’m very glad to see Jos Perez get a couple shots to go down. In practice she’s a lethal shooter. It was good to see a couple of her shots go down in a game.”

Piper Edge and Kennedy Coles led the Vikings (3-3) with seven points apiece. Coles added seven rebounds.

Plymouth Whitemarsh 47, Upper Merion 31

Upper Merion 7 5 4 15 – 31

Plymouth Whitemarsh 5 14 16 12 – 47

UM: Nguyen 1 0-0 2, Fuqua 1 0-0 3, Coles 3 0-0 7, Dougherty 0 0-0 0, Parson 0 1-2 1, Zeiss 1 2-2 4, Bonifanti 0 0-0 0, Callison 1 1-1 3, Edge 2 3-6 7, Jackson 2 0-0 4. Total 11 7-11 31.

PW: Perez 2 0-0 6, Walcoff 0 0-0 0, Williams 0 0-0 0, Patete 1 1-2 3, Avery 4 1-2 10, Winland 3 2-2 11, Baron 0 0-0 0, Riley 0 0-0 0, Meersman 3 3-4 10, Brodzinski 0 0-0 0, Peduzzi 0 0-0 0, Harvey 2 2-2 7. Total 15 9-12 47.

3-point goals: UM: Fuqua, Coles. PW: Perez 2, Avery, Winland 3, Meersman, Harvey.