Eastern girls shake it off to beat West York
The Eastern York girls' basketball team was on quite a roll to wrap up the 2016 portion of its schedule, ending the calendar year on an eight-game win streak.
When the calendar turned to 2017, it appeared the Golden Knights' winning ways didn't make the leap to the new year. Already this week, Eastern dropped games to Gettysburg and Delone Catholic, before playing West York on Friday night.
Eastern led at the end of the first three quarters, but the Bulldogs grabbed their first lead of the contest with 6:13 to play and pushed the margin to four points with less than five minutes to play,
But the Golden Knights hung around.
And although free-throw shooting was a weakness earlier in the week, Eastern converted eight of 12 free throws in the fourth quarter to pull out the 55-49 victory. The Knights outscored the Bulldogs over the final 3:18 to collect their first win of 2017.
"We had a rough week," Eastern head coach Brad Weaver said. "We definitely underestimated Gettysburg on Tuesday. They played a great game. We missed 19 foul shots. When you miss 19 foul shots and 12 layups, its going to be hard to win."
As Weaver alluded, the foul shots haven't been falling. In the losses to Gettysburg and Delone Catholic, the Golden Knights converted a combined 23-of-54 attempts.
"We haven't played a complete game yet," Weaver said. "When we make our layups and foul shots, I don't know what will happen because we are playing good defense."
Friday night, Eastern was 20-of-31 at the line, with Hannah Myers converting 11-of-15 of her attempts. Myers led all scorers with 25 points.
"We got our first two losses this week and it woke us up a lot," Myers said. "We didn't want to lose that bond that led to a lot of our success. We just wanted to play together as a team."
With no seniors on the team, Eastern (9-2, 5-1 YAIAA Division II) is untested, Weaver said.
"Until this year they really haven't been in a big game," Weaver said. "There is a method to finishing a game and I thought we finished well tonight.
"They are tough girls. We had a rough week and some teams would've just given up, so I'm proud to finish up the week this way."
While Myers led the Golden Knights' offensive attack, she got help from Cassidy Arnold, who scored six of her 13 points in the third quarter, and Katie Lehman who drilled three first quarter 3-pointers.
"We told Hannah that teams will be doubling her and the need to kick it to the open shooter. We have girls that can shoot," Weaver said.
West York (3-3 Division II, 8-3 overall) trailed by as many as nine but battled the entire game. The Bulldogs were led by the trio of Alayna Harris (12 points), Angie Hawkins (11) and Catie McCarty (10).