Greensburg Central Catholic had not led for the first 31 minutes of their WPIAL Class 2A boys basketball preliminary-round game Thursday. JT Stawovy had not scored in the game for the Centurions.
Both of those changed with 46 seconds left in the fourth quarter.
Stawovy got a backdoor, reverse layup with just under a minute to play for his first points of the game. He immediately followed with a steal and breakaway layup to give the Centurions a 43-41 road victory over Union.
“Resistance and toughness,” first-year coach Tim O’Rourke said. “He sat a lot in the second half. (We) put him in, and it was instant. He was a spark for us.”
Greensburg Central Catholic (7-16) weathered multiple Union scoring runs at the Covelli Field House in a rematch of last season’s district quarterfinals matchup. The Centurions flipped their two-point upset loss from a year ago to a two-point upset win over Union (9-14).
Union jumped to a 12-4 lead midway though the opening quarter behind an 8-0 run by Landon Eckert on a pair of 3s and a layup.
“Early, we were getting (Eckert) on some staggers and some early looks,” Scotties first-year coach Darren Berkley said, “then we moved away from it.”
GCC cut the lead to 20-13 at the half, and then the offense finally got off of the bus.
Luke Semelka scored 10 of his team-high 14 points in the third quarter, including back-to-back 3-pointers.
“He was another one who was struggling to hit shots early,” O’Rourke said of Semelka. “He didn’t let it affect him. It’s all up here. It’s all mental.”
After another Union run to start the fourth, GCC started to chip away. Carson Kramer, Alex Snively, Lucca Denis and Stawovy all scored their only field goals in the final quarter.
All eight Centurions who played scored a basket.
“It starts on defense,” O’Rourke said. “You have to get stops to add possessions. Whether it’s a miss and a rebound or a steal, our runs started with defensive stops.”
Eckert led all scorers with 20 points for Union but could not get any shots off in the final couple of minutes.
“We started taking some bad fadeaways,” Berkley said. “We like the uncontested shots and layups, not ones with people hanging all over you.”
The Scotties held a one-point lead with just more than a minute to play. A couple of missed jump shots ended the Union possession and led to the heroics of Stawovy.
“We had the lead and the ball, and we discussed ‘only layups’ and we jacked (up a shot),” Berkley said. “It’s youth and inexperience. We’ll grow from it. But it’s understanding situational basketball. We grew a lot this year, but we didn’t handle the end of that game very well.”
After winning just one game before Christmas, Greensburg Central Catholic has turned it on in the second half of the season.
“This is our second double-digit comeback in the last couple of weeks,” O’Rouke said, referencing his team’s 18-point rally against Ligonier Valley.
The Centurions will face section foe and No. 2 seed Sewickley Academy in the Round of 16.
The young GCC squad will have to shoot much better from the free-throw line to upset one of the top teams in the state. GCC shot 3 of 17 from the charity stripe against Union.
“400 each!” O’Rourke said when asked how many free throws the team will shoot in practice tomorrow. “We shoot so many of them, but I think it goes to show their inexperience.
“It’s not an excuse, it just is that they haven’t had big-time varsity minutes until this year. It wears on them as the game goes on and affects their free throws and their jumpers. But it shows how mentally tough it is that it doesn’t affect the rest of their game.”