Quaker Valley clinches at least a share of Class 4A Section 4 title with 46-43 win over South Allegheny

LEETSDALE, Pennsylvania – Quaker Valley won the WPIAL 4A title last season and was 27-0 before suffering its only loss of the season in the PIAA state championship game to Neumann-Goretti.

Despite the loss of four starters from last year’s team to graduation, including Adou Thiero who is at the University of Kentucky and Markus Frank who is at Shippensburg, the players on this year’s team knew they were still good even if some people didn’t expect them to be.

The Quakers showed again Tuesday night how good they can be, winning a share of the Class 4A Section 4 title with a 46-43 home win over South Allegheny for their fifth straight victory.

“It feels good (to earn a share of the section) because everyone said we were going to suck in the offseason and we just proved them all wrong,” said junior Joey Coyle.

When the teams met on January 13, South Allegheny won at home 68-42 and the Quakers trailed 18-1 at the end of the first quarter and 32-9 at halftime.

On their senior night, the Quakers wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.

“We got smacked by them earlier in the season and we knew that when we would play them again on senior night, we had to go get revenge,” said senior Noah Jordan, who scored a team-high 17 points for Quaker Valley.

Of Jordan’s 17 points, none were more crucial than the pair of 3-pointers he hit in the fourth quarter.

With the game tied at 36-36 after Bryce Epps stole the ball and made a layup for the Gladiators, Quaker Valley head coach Mike Mastroianni called a timeout.

On the next two Quakers possessions, Jordan knocked down 3s to make it 42-36.

Quaker Valley then held on to win despite missing the front end of a 1-and-1 twice from the free throw line. The second of those came in the final seconds and the Glkadiators got the rebound and called a timeout.

With less than two seconds left, junior Mike Michalski inbounded the ball to Jeston Beatty, who attempted a half-court shot at the buzzer that missed.

Quaker Valley felt better about the way the prepared for this game than they did for the first meeting.

“Our preparation for this game was a whole lot different compared to when we were preparing for them the first time,” sophomore starter Dana Kromah said. “Before the first game, we weren’t really locked in, while I could tell tonight we were more locked in.”

South Allegheny started 13-0 but now have only won three of its last seven games to fall to 16-4. Bryce Epps led the Gladiators with 22 points on Tuesday.

Quaker Valley senior starter Troy Kozar was injured in the middle of the second quarter and did not return to the game but the Quakers were able to deal with the adversity.

“Once Troy went down, it was next man up.” Jordan said. “Charlie (Griffith) knew his assignment coming off the bench and he stepped up when he needed to.”

Quaker Valley can win the section title to themselves on Friday night with a win on the road at Montour. While the team knows that they are guaranteed to be at least co-section champions, they would rather have that section championship plaque to themselves.

“This win doesn’t solidify a section championship, wo cannot be laid back,” Coyle said. “We have to attack them from the tip-off and we cannot back down at all.”