Lady Tigers Stumble Against Haverford

NEWTOWN SQUARE–It’s been the little things here and there that have plagued girls basketball team. On Monday night, in a Central League game against Haverford High School, it was the turnovers that the Tigers had problems with.

A close game for one half turned into a route, after Marple Newtown turned the ball over 15 times in the first half, and couldn’t recover from a six-minute scoring draught, falling to the Fords, 60-41.

Marple Newtown, which still seems in a prime position to make the PIAA District 1 Class AAA playoffs, dropped to 8-12 overall and 2-11 in the Central League, while Haverford improved to 13-7 and 9-5 in the league. The Tigers were led by Melissa Levy’s 16 points, and Haverford’s Jaclyn Gantz led all scorers with 22 points.

Marple Newtown led at one point, 19-16, when Haverford went on a 21-0 run that gave the Fords control of the game and went from late in the second quarter into the third quarter.

“I don’t know what happened there, our defense pretty much had too many breakdowns,” Levy said. “We have to play better team defense, and better help defense. Hopefully, we learn from this.”

Marple Newtown got off to a nice start, leading 12-7 and 16-10 at one time. But Levy, a 6-foot junior, got into early foul trouble and was forced to the bench. That’s when Haverford chipped away. The Fords’ Gantz finally hit a three-point shot, followed by Caroline Price’s trey giving the Fords their first lead of the game, 22-19, with 1:14 left in the half.

That was only the beginning. The Fords went on to score the last 10 points of the first half, and took that momentum into the second half, building a 37-19 lead before Marple Newtown’s Denise McKeown hit a pair of free throws with 3:37 remaining in the third quarter to end the dry spell. The closest the Tigers would come from there was 39-26, trailing by as much as 53-30 and 55-32 midway into the fourth quarter.

“When Melissa went out, I think we tried to overcompensate,” Tigers’ coach Mike Colgan said. “Turnovers just killed us. We came out in the second half and immediately turned the ball over. We were trying to slow the game down, and we got caught a bit in a faster pace.”

The Tigers are still in a nice spot to earn a Class AAA playoff berth. Marple Newtown would make the district playoffs for the second time in three years.

“We’ve had a little success here and we’re trying to build the program and getting to the districts would be a great experience again,” Colgan said. “We’re going to the district playoffs again and we’ll see what we can do from there.”