With the crowd gone, her teammates on the bus and her parents waiting for her in the lobby, Erica Gribble did a quick panorama of a quiet Norwin gymnasium.
The noise was gone but the sentiment remained.
“I had never played here before tonight,” the Greensburg Central Catholic star point guard said. “All these years, this was my first game here.”
That made Monday’s decisive PIAA Class 3A semifinal win over Shady Side Academy more meaningful for Gribble, a North Huntingdon native.
GCC used a big second half to thump the Bulldogs, 49-27, to advance to its first PIAA final since 1997.
Gribble had attended camps at Norwin but had never played a game there.
“That was, 100 percent, the best game where we all worked together,” Gribble said.
It was an unofficial home game for the 5-foot-11 Richmond commit, who is GCC’s all-time scoring leader.
“It was pretty cool to finally be here where my siblings played,” Gribble said. “When we came in (to the front lobby), I saw the ball (in the trophy case) with my sister’s all-time leading scorer ball and it showed her WPIAL championships on it. To be able to play one of my last high school games here is pretty neat.”
Her middle sister, Olivia, who now works in Houston, Texas, also played at Norwin.
Alayna Gribble, Norwin’s career scoring leader and a former Pitt and Saint Joseph’s player, now works in Philadelphia and her father, Dan, an assistant coach for GCC, thinks she will make the trip to Hershey on Thursday to watch Erica’s final prep game.
GCC (23-7) will take on Holy Redeemer (22-8) for the state title at 6 p.m. at Giant Center.
“It’s cool for Erica to play here,” Dan Gribble said of Norwin. “We live five minutes away. This is a lot closer than all of the other trips we’ve made over the years.”
GCC couldn’t host a WPIAL first-round game because it didn’t meet the league capacity requirement for 3A, so it played at Fox Chapel. Its quarterfinal game was at Bethel Park, its semifinal at Peters Township and the WPIAL final was at Pitt’s Petersen Events Center.
The state playoffs also piled on the mileage. Another would-be home game was played at Hampton, followed by drives to Sharon (second round) and Altoona (quarterfinals).
GCC also played two games in Florida and played a game at St Vincent-St. Mary in Ohio, the alma mater of LeBron James.
Speaking of driving, Shady Side Academy couldn’t do much of it in the West final against GCC’s suffocating zone. The Centurions used a 3-2, 2-3 and 1-3-1 (with a chaser) to contain the Bulldogs, who had had their way with GCC at times previously in man-to-man matchups.
Shady Side standouts Karis Thomas and Cassie Sauer were silenced, and their teammates struggled to score.
Gribble, who didn’t take as many shots as usual, pivoted to a facilitator, cutter and high-post defender.
One of the best players in the state has become more of a decoy in certain playoff games, allowing her teammates to find spacing and contribute to the greater good?
“A little bit, yeah,” GCC coach Chris Skatell said. “That’s because of the development of (Avery) Jones. We have to share the ball to be successful. If we don’t get the look we want, we can move the ball and end up with a layup. We want to make (the opponent) defend everyone.”
Jones had a game-high 16 points against Shady Side Academy, which beat GCC three times this season.
She has taken some of the scoring load off of Gribble and senior Jayla Peterson, a formidable one-two punch that has help in the frontcourt.
“My role isn’t always to score,” Gribble said. “I am drawing two or three defenders. My role is to get it to our bigs. Feed them, assist and defend.”
The sacrifice it takes to be a funnel in the offense comes easy to Gribble.
Gribble only had seven points in the semifinal win, but pushed her career total to 2,362 points, third-most among girls scorers in Westmoreland County and sixth among all scorers, counting the boys, in the county.
“Points are points,” she said. “I got my 2,000. That’s not what matters. My goal is to win a state championship. I have said that all along.”
Shady Side Academy coach Jonna Burke said Gribble is one of the best players she has coached against.
“I can’t say enough about Erica Gribble,” Burke said. “She showed unselfish play. She always makes the heads-up play.
“We didn’t move the ball quickly enough; They are so long up top.”
Long arms, long legs and long bus rides.