Notes: William Penn holds off Dover

On a night when Collin Smith scored his 1,000th point and William Penn erased a halftime deficit to hold off Dover, a few leftover tidbits from the notebook.

Read all about South Western's win over York Suburban here.

-- From the second they emerged from the halftime locker room, William Penn looked like a new team. Lethargic and uninspired in the first half, the Bearcats began pushing the pace and attacking Dover's zone defense with purpose.

So exactly what, then, was said in the halftime locker room?

"I think I screamed the whole time," William Penn coach Troy Sowers said. "We looked happy to be here."

When asked later about the halftime speech, Tavon Parker called it "Deadly."

"You don’t see coach Sowers get too red," Parker added, "but he was pretty angry."

Whatever was said, it seemed to work.

-- William Penn's starting lineup looked a good bit different Tuesday.

Mainstays Dejian Williams and Derek Wilson were both held out the first quarter as punishment for breaking a team rule, Sowers said. Jabarri Standley-Brown and Ethan Fountain started in their place.

"It was not a school thing," the coach added. "It was a team rule and they knew it. We were all let down a little bit because it’s crunch time and I think they learned their lesson. They’re both team-oreinted players. It’s going to take everybody staying focused to get this win on Thursday. They were disciplined by me and now we’re able to move forward"

Williams went on to score 14 points for the Bearcats, 13 of them after halftime.

-- Dover coach Brian Schmoyer offered no comment on a pair of controversial calls at the end of the game.

First, Williams was ruled to have been fouled while attempting a 3-pointer, even though the Dover bench argued that he had stepped inside the arc. Williams made all three free throws to give the Bearcats a 49-46 lead.

Later, on Dover's final possession, Schmoyer and the bench called for a foul after Connor Snyder was stripped before he could get a potentially game-tying 3-pointer off.

-- Tavon Parker came up huge for the Bearcats in the waning moments of the game. Not only did he drain 9-of-10 free throws in the fourth quarter, he also played excellent defense down the stretch. Parker kept Dover sharpshooter Jerell Figueroa during a late sequence, then stripped Snyder of the ball during the final possession mentioned above.

"He's got that Parker blood," Sowers said. "He just knows how to get it done down the stretch."

-- Dover was making the first YAIAA semifinal appearance in the program's history. And even though the Eagles came out on the wrong side of the scoreline, Schmoyer's group afforded itself quite well.

"We told our guys into today that we can't just be happy to be here," Schmoyer said. "We're a very good basketball team playing great basketball now. We put ourselves in a position that no other team from Dover has come. We told our guys to take advantage of that, and I thought they did tonight. I thought they fought hard. I thought they played hard. I thought they were aggressive.

"I told the guys after the game, sometimes you can't control the ball rimming out, missing shots. The one thing you can control is putting heart and desire into things, and I thought they did that tonight."

-- How good has their year's YAIAA boys' tournament been? Of the six games played, we've had one overtime game, one double-overtime game and three more games that came down to the final minute.

Finalist South Western has won its two tournament games by a total of three points.

-- William Penn will be making its fourth straight trip to the YAIAA tournament championship game. The previous three were all against Eastern York -- the Bearcats won the first, then lost the last two.