Penn Hills 5-foot-11 sophomore guard Malaya Middleton believes she and her teammates know the formula for winning Section 1-5A basketball games. The Indians need to make sure they have all of the right variables in place.
What Penn Hills has found in close contests is that the Indians haven’t been equipped to score when they have an uncontested look at the basket. The Indians shot 37.5% (6 of 16) from the charity stripe in a 45-39 road section loss to Plum.
It was the fourth consecutive loss for the Indians (5-5, 3-2). Before the game, Penn Hills had a half-game lead on Shaler, Fox Chapel and Plum for first place in the section.
Middleton, who scored 11 points in the loss to the Mustangs, went 1 of 4 from the free-throw line.
“I feel like when the game comes down to it, we need to make free throws,” Middleton said. “If we would’ve made more than half of our free throws, we could have won three more games. I think we need to work on it. Since we played Plum in the beginning, I think we could work on it and beat them next time.”
Penn Hills also will look forward to a rematch with Fox Chapel, which beat the Indians 45-44 in their section opener. Indians coach Robert Cash isn’t happy with his team’s inability to make teams pay at the free-throw line. Penn Hills has shot below 50% from the charity stripe three times this season.
He isn’t ready to sound the alarm either.
“If we take care of business and we play tough, we play hard and execute, we’ll figure out a way to make free throws,” Cash said. “If we can make free throws and rebound the ball, we can compete with anyone in our section.”
Against Plum, the Indians showed off their increased maturity around star senior guard Milani Oliver. Freshman guard Harmony McLean scored a game-high 15 points.
The Mustangs, who never trailed, had a nine-point lead entering the fourth quarter before Penn Hills rallied. Middleton made two 3-pointers to cut the deficit to three before Plum was able to recover and stretch the lead out again.
Middleton said she felt like the Indians’ slide was good motivation.
Penn Hills won four consecutive games before hitting a rough patch.
“Losing, honestly, makes us want to work harder,” Middleton said. “You don’t want to keep losing. You just have to go back to practice and work hard.”
Cash said he believes his team is deeper but still needs to work on how to compete at the varsity level. Penn Hills doesn’t have many upperclassmen to lean on.
“We just have to find a way to get a win at this point,” Cash said. “We had an opportunity to win three of those four games, and we didn’t seize the opportunity. We just have to be in savage mode and figure out how we are going to get one win to get the opportunity to get back on track.”