EF girls fall after going toe to toe with No. 1 seed Beaver Area
By JOSE NEGRON
jnegron@yourmvi.com
With less than three minutes remaining in Friday’s WPIAL Class 4A quarterfinal matchup, Elizabeth Forward looked on the verge of a monumental upset.
The Warriors, who continued to claw away at various deficits in the second half, had just pulled to within five points at 39-34 following the second of two Brooke Markland 3-pointers.
Then, Beaver’s Emma Pavelek took matters into her own hands.
Pavelek scored all of Beaver’s 14 fourth-quarter points, including a 10-2 run in the final 2:39 of the top-seeded Bobcats’ 49-36 win over the eighth-seeded Warriors.
A Navy recruit, Pavelek was held to four points in the first quarter before sitting out the final four minutes of the second due to foul trouble. In the second half, Pavelek dominated by scoring 19 of her game-high 23 points.
“That’s why she’s a Division I kid, because she can do those types of things,” Beaver head coach Greg Huston said. “After halftime, we told her, ‘You can’t do anything now; you can’t shoot layups and you can’t go for blocks or steals. You have to play it straight because we can’t afford to lose you.’ She hit a couple of jumpers, which kind of got them away from the rim, and then she exploited that. That was big for her.”
While Pavelek helped Beaver (18-0) gain much needed separation in the closing minutes of the win, Elizabeth Forward (8-6) gave all it had in its bid to knock off the unbeaten Bobcats.
The Warriors stepped up on defense and hit some key shots against Class 4A’s top defensive unit, especially early.
Trailing 7-2 late in the first quarter, EF went on a 9-2 run in the final 2:38 to take an 11-9 lead after eight minutes. Haven Briggs hit a pair of 3-pointers during the spurt, while Anna Resnik added one of her own. Briggs and Resnik each scored 11 points to lead the Warriors.
“That is an unbeaten team with phenomenal players and a really good coach,” EF head coach Krystal Gibbs said. “Our kids came in and gave them a run for their money, so I’m very proud of them.”
Huston was complimentary of the Warriors’ efforts as well.
“They did a nice job and we knew by watching film just how athletic they were, and they showed that tonight,” Huston said. “They shot well and gave us all we could handle.”
Despite having the lead heading into the second quarter, EF was unable to capitalize in the frame when Pavelek and 5-10 junior forward Payton List weren’t on the floor.
Shortly before Pavelek picked up her third foul, List departed the game with an injury after scoring eight points through the opening minutes of the second.
EF trimmed its deficit to 14-13 and looked to take advantage of Beaver being without its two leading scorers, but Maddi and Makenzie Weiland made sure to take care of things in their absence.
They helped lead a defensive effort that limited EF to just three points in the final five minutes and combined to score Beaver’s final six points of the first half, pushing the lead to 20-16 after 16 minutes of play.
Maddi Heiland joined Pavelek in double figures with 10 points.
“They definitely kept us in it in that second quarter,” Huston said of the Heiland sisters. “They did an excellent job and I thought both of them did a great job of rebounding, too. We had 40 rebounds tonight, including 30 defensive, and I think those two had a vast majority of them.”
Beaver narrowly outscored EF by a 15-12 margin in the third quarter to take a 35-28 lead into the fourth.
The Warriors continued to fight back and cut into the lead, but for every shot they made, the Bobcats were quick to answer.
“I think we did a good job defensively, we just lost some steam there at the end,” Gibbs said. “Beaver is just a very experienced and good team. That’s all there is to it.”
The Bobcats advance to play No. 4 Knoch in the Class 4A semifinals Tuesday.
